Why Wonder

We believe, do good, and do it as quickly as possible.

Do good — and do it as quickly as possible: that’s the mantra that drives Wonder. We’re experts in messaging, storytelling, psychology and opinion research. We believe curiosity and smart research create amazing, breakthrough moments to make the world a better place. We also understand that human beings are Heartwired — that emotions, identity, values, beliefs and lived experiences shape our decisions on complex social issues — and use that knowledge to help our partners create social change.

Audience Insights + Strategies for Change Makers

Policy Change

We leverage the Heartwired approach to build or broaden support to change policies. Our work has led to lasting policy change like granting medical-aid in dying to terminally ill patients.

Narrative Change

We guide our partners through the Heartwired approach for narrative change that builds narrative power across movements. By working with movement advocates, our team has transformed cultural narratives, including to achieve the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.

Behavior Change

We unpack the values, beliefs, lived experiences, identities, and emotions of our audiences to make faster progress on socially sensitive issues. Our team utilizes deep audience research to unlock effective formulas for changing audience behavior, including on COVID-19 vaccine confidence and climate change.

Audience Research

We conduct audience research that gets at the heart of how our audiences feel, think, and act. Our team includes skilled moderators and qualitative analysts, and we partner with leading quantitative public opinion researchers to deliver insights that can drive action on issues like conservation, immigration, and democracy.

Communications & Message Strategy

We build brands and messages that meet the needs of our audiences. Our partners work on tough social issues within complex and changing landscapes. We create organizational brands and messages that are rooted in social change goals, including for partners working on housing and homelessness, health equity, and gender equity.

Capacity Building

We craft trainings that empower advocates to build skills in messaging, strategic communications, public speaking, story-telling, and audience research. Our experts tailor capacity strengthening to specific organizations and cohorts of organizations. For example, we have trained hundreds of immigration advocates on evidenced-based strategies for winning the immigration narrative, and partnered with foundations to build storytelling, audience research, and other capacity among their grantees.

A Letter From Robert Pérez

Wonder’s Founder and Chief Exploration Officer

Years ago, I was working with advocates to boost Christians’ acceptance of LGBT people. It sounds difficult now, so think of how impossible it felt back then. Except it wasn’t impossible — but it did require a new approach to social-change communications.

Working with my colleagues in public-opinion research and psychology, our research uncovered a conflict that many Christians feel: they cared about the LGBT people in their lives, but they worried about staying true to their church’s teachings.

The traditional approach to communications hammers audiences with messages that ignore this conflict, eventually writing conflicted audiences off as a lost cause. We were able to create a messaging strategy that helped Christians manage their conflict, bringing them to our side and garnering wins on issues like the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.

I founded Wonder to help other changemakers make progress on complex social issues using the same approach. Using smart research, we can uncover our audience’s conflict, help them manage it, and make the impossible suddenly become possible. — Robert