Through our partnership with MAPS, we are fundraising to build a world-class resource that provides free, open access to custom polling, audience research, strategy playbooks, and communication tactics in all 50 U.S. states. The first pieces are already live below. The rest is on the roadmap and waiting on funding.
We have entered a new era for psychedelics. But the future is still uncertain, because great ideas do not succeed simply on their merits. Even the best ideas can be derailed by negative stereotypes, misinformation, and political inaction. Creating social change requires a clear strategy for overcoming the social obstacles. But the psychedelics community does not currently have the tools, insights, and resources needed to shift public perceptions and create widespread policy change. So we are going to provide that for everyone, for free.
Founded by two Yale scientists, XandY is an independent research and strategy firm that helps the world's most important ideas build momentum in society.
We help organizations locate and move the levers that create lasting change in their target audiences, and we specialize in the most challenging situations: where emotions are strong, habits are firm, opinions are polarized, misinformation is rampant, and the stakes are high. Our past work includes partnerships with billion-dollar corporations, global nonprofits, major tech startups, and world-class universities.
Now live
The Psychedelic Five Live
Americans don't split into two camps on psychedelics. Our audience segmentation finds five distinct audiences, three of which sit in a middle that a national average makes invisible. Each has its own beliefs, motivations, and needs, and the report includes a playbook for reaching every one of them.
Now live
The XandY Data Explorer Live
An interactive tool for discovering insights from our 2025 national survey. Use the menus to build custom visualizations of Americans' opinions about psychedelics.
03 · Not yet built
What we're fundraising to build next
Everything above this line is live and runs on real data. Everything below it is a mock-up of what the Hub becomes with funding: interactive state maps, state playbooks, audience tracking, and repeated polling. Every figure that follows uses simulated numbers, not real results.
Mock-up · simulated data
Interactive Maps of Public Opinion Preview
State-by-state opinion on psychedelics, so a group in Colorado and a group in Vermont can each see their own audience. Choose a topic from the dropdown and hover over the map.
Mock-ups · simulated data
Data and strategy resources for advocates Preview
Three more pieces of the Hub, shown here as mock-ups. They show what each resource will look like; the real versions will run on the polling the Hub funds.
The case
Why build the Social Insights Hub?
History is full of wonderful ideas that failed to catch on due to social obstacles in the form of popular myths, fears, habits, biases, norms, politics, and distractions.
Even the best solutions to important problems are not guaranteed to have durable, widespread success. XandY exists to help the world's most important ideas overcome the social obstacles so we can build momentum in public opinion and behavior.
Imagine an advocacy group in Colorado needs to create an effective campaign to shift public opinion and to persuade local lawmakers. There is no available data on Coloradans' current opinions, needs, and motives, so it's unclear what strategies would be most effective. The group cannot afford to fund their own custom research, so they have to rely on inferior data, like a few anecdotes, intuition, and some broad national data that doesn't really represent their specific audience.
Meanwhile, a group in Vermont is struggling with the same problem because they too have a unique audience that needs tailored strategies.
Every local group we talk to voices some variation of this problem. We're trying to solve it by providing everyone with all the data and strategy resources they need.
The Social Insights Hub will produce, as a free resource:
- Data at the state level: insights and strategy for all 50 states.
- Communication playbooks tailored to audiences.
- Tracking of progress in public opinion over time with bi-annual polling.
- Concrete evidence of citizens' policy support for informing lawmakers.
- A custom segmentation that reveals distinct audience personas. Already live →
- Free, open access to all of the insights, always.
Your philanthropic support will make this project possible
This project can only be built with donations. Every gift goes toward polling, research, and resources that will be free to the whole movement.
The Social Insights Hub is a charitable project fiscally sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Inc. (MAPS), a Section 501(c)(3) public charity (federal tax ID: 59-2751953). In accordance with federal tax requirements, MAPS exercises discretion and control over all project funds. Please make your donations for the purposes of this project directly to MAPS.
The Psychedelics Social Insights Hub
Data and strategy
for social change.
Free, open access to polling, audience research, strategy playbooks, and communication tactics for the psychedelics movement, in all 50 states. Built by XandY, fiscally sponsored by MAPS, and funded by people like you.