ReimagineUS backs narrative entrepreneurs building the connective infrastructure of a shared “we.”
Narrative is not just what we say. It is how people locate themselves in a common story, decide what matters, and imagine a future together.
When that shared meaning breaks down, communities fracture. When it is rebuilt, new possibilities become visible.
We identify, support, and connect the people working at that frontier.
Accelerating the Infrastructure of Imagination
Got a narrative infrastructure idea?
Why Narrative INfrastructure
Narratives aren’t just messages. They are the operating system that binds us together and powers our understanding of each other.
Most of the resources in civic and progressive spaces go to rapid response. Counter-messaging, crisis communications, putting out fires–the responding and pivoting tied to news cycles. That work is necessary. But it’s only half the picture. Without the slower work of building durable formats, institutions, and trust, it becomes nearly impossible to change or influence the larger narratives at play.
What Lasting Narrative Work Requires
Some narrative work is immediate. It responds to the urgency of the moment: defending truth, countering harmful stories, meeting the next crisis.
That work matters. It always will.
Our framework identifies four things every lasting community with shared meaning needs:
Rails: ways to move meaning
Containers: ways to hold meaning
Doorways: ways to invite people into shared community and meaning
Referees: ways to survive and integrate disagreement into shared meaning and community.
Every durable “we” in history—every civilization or people with shared understanding and values–had common stories at its foundation.
Most narrative efforts invest in rails—getting the message out, widening reach, driving visibility. But lasting shared meaning requires more than distribution.
Without containers, doorways, and referees, a story can spread widely without becoming community. It can generate attention without building understanding, belonging, or legitimacy.
ReimagineUS focuses on that deeper work.
We identify and support narrative entrepreneurs building the projects, platforms, and institutions that help shared meaning travel, take root, and hold over time.
Narrative entrepreneurs are building the narrative infrastructure a shared future depends on.
Building Narrative Infrastructure
with ReimagineUS
FAQ
What We Do
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ReimagineUS supports people and projects putting narrative infrastructure into practice. The formats, communities, ways of storytelling that make a shared “we” durable enough to create meaningful and lasting forms of community.
We provide the scaffolding: the frameworks, training, the tools, resources, funding, and a network to help narrative entrepreneurs doing this work wherever they are.
Who We’re looking for
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We’re looking for communicators, organizers, creators, educators, storytellers, artists, concerned local citizens (we call them narrative entrepreneurs) who care about their communities and rebuilding connective spaces to tell stories and shared meaning.
If you’ve got a project to build community, narratives, tell shared stories that unite us instead of divide us, we want to hear from you.
If you’re obsessed with building narratives and community together in today’s fragmented digital age—reach out.
And if you’re a funder or institutional partner interested in supporting narrative infrastructure, let’s connect.
What you’ll get
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Funding and development for your project or idea to help take it to scale.
Network connections. Connect to experts across disciplines—funders, operations, private sector, nonprofit sector, researchers, legal and compliance, AI and technologists—partnering with ReimagineUS means more than funding. It’s connection to a community who cares deeply about scaling narrative infrastructure and helping good ideas succeed.
Mentoring and training. We’ve been communicators for a long time. We know what it’s like to work in the trenches and have big ideas that need nourishment. Wherever you are in your narrative journey, we’ll provide mentoring and coaching to help you get where you’re meant to be.
Feedback and community. We’re building a cohort of likeminded, narrative infrastructure obsessed peers. When you’re part of ReimagineUS, you won’t just have access to our resources, you’ll join a community of people who care about narratives and community-building and can help you grow.
Other duties as assigned. That line always comes in handy. When you’re scaling a new idea, there are bound to be unforeseen challenges and forks in the road. While funding is probably what brought you here, we think you’ll stay for everything else. The bottom line is that ReimagineUS is committed to building narrative infrstrastrue. If your idea is a good one, our goal is to help you scale it and succeed.
Our focus areas cover the places where narrative infrastructure matters most:
Local narrative infrastructure: rebuilding the local information layer that communities lost when local news collapsed.
Deliberation formats: creating spaces where sitting with disagreement becomes normal again.
Inoculation at scale: teaching people to recognize manipulation and lies before they encounter them. Prebunking always outperforms debunking.
Education as decelerator: defending the slow process of building judgement together, in shared physical spaces, and understanding what it means to be human together in a world that’s increasingly optimized for speed and AI.
Cultural custody: Counter streaming and renting access to content and information with community-driven and community-owned media projects.
AI governance as civic capacity: AI makes private meaning cheaper and more enticing than public meaning. We need spaces and places that are worth entering without our phones – formats that make shared reality more engaging than synthetic solitude.
What we focus on: Narrative Infrastructure Projects
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HOw to apply
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If you’ve read this far and have a narrative infrastructure project that needs help getting to the next level, then you’re ready to apply for ReimagineUS’s Incubator Program.
Application Criteria
It’s pretty simple. To be considered for our program you must:
Have an existing project that demonstrates measurable success and are ready to scale it.
Have a new idea for a project and can demonstrate an initial proof of concept (basically, you need to show us that your idea is feasible or feasible with support/resources).
Demonstrate some experience publishing, shipping, launching or mobilizing projects successfully.
Own the idea. Unfortunately, we can’t help you if another business, organization, or entity has complete ownership over your idea or project. The intellectual property must be yours.
Read this guide on what you’ll need to apply. Still have questions? Send us a note via the web contact form.
Application submissions are currently closed.
Sign-up to receive an email notification when the ReimagineUS Narrative Incubator application goes live.
Who We Are
ReimagineUS exists to rebuild the narrative infrastructure that created meaning and community for generations in our fast-moving, optimized, increasingly frictionless digital world.
We’re focused on the slow, unglamorous work of building the formats, frameworks, practices, and community networks that make shared meaning durable.
We find, identify, support, and help scale the narrative entrepreneurs who are building the narrative infrastructure communities run on.
Jeff Parcher, Executive Director
Jeff Parcher is Executive Director of ReimagineUS. A civic strategist with more than three decades of experience in narrative research, public debate, and communications, he has worked at the intersection of organizing, political strategy, and the systems that shape how shared meaning holds or breaks.
He was Director of Public Affairs at Community Change, where he oversaw communications and digital strategy, served on the executive team, and led narrative research on poverty, immigration, housing, and economic ideas that build power for low-income communities of color.
Before that, he worked as a communications consultant for Democratic congressional committees, presidential campaigns, and Fortune 500 companies. Earlier in his career, he spent twelve years as director of debate at Georgetown University, where he won nearly every major honor in modern policy debate, including the 1992 National Debate Championship. He holds a law degree.
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