In announcing this Agitator Starting Over series I posed the fundamental question that will guide this exploration: How would you build a growing, sustainable nonprofit from scratch in today’s fast-changing and challenging environment?

Tom and I are thrilled with the outpouring of suggestions and recommendations for the series, and specific proposals that might brighten the sector’s future.

Some readers like Kerry Meyers urged us to explore the importance of feedback and the ‘donor’s voice’. Others, like Erica Waasdorp noted the importance of monthly giving in the scheme of stating over. Veteran Jay Love weighed in on the importance of empirical research in all this. And Mike Cowart appropriately noted that the days of the ‘spray and pray’ approach to mass fundraising are over and urged us to pay attention to the increasingly important role of women and Baby Boomers to our future.

And Tom in his post appropriately labeled Tom’s Take wondered whether the answers to some of the key questions we’ll be dealing with — What do donors want? Are we delivering it? And why are they leaving? — are any different now than they would have been 10, 20 or 30 years ago?

Tom thinks today’s donors “want what they’ve always wanted — to act on their values, to express compassion, to be part of something bigger, to feel better about themselves, to have an impact and make a difference, to respond to fear, to be appreciated. Motives and needs like these haven’t changed and never will.”

And reader Mary Cahalane agreed, noting that “it’s the ‘how’, not the ‘why’ that’s changed. The same impulses are still deeply human. How people choose to act on them, and what encourages them to do so is changing.”

I urge every Agitator reader to take out that imaginary blank sheet of paper and list those changes you would make if you had the opportunity to start over.

For the next few Starting Over posts we’re going to focus on:

• Understanding which “Fundraising Rules” have changed and which haven’t.

• What changes have occurred that represent a fundamental change in the basic approach and assumptions to contemporary fundraising and what to do about them.

• What do we really know — or not know — about our donors and what they want? And why that question is so fundamentally important.

• How do we find out exactly what our donors want and how to deliver on those desires? What donor experiences and engagement do we offer — or don’t offer — that determine whether donors stay or leave?

• How do we hold on to donors and increase support when so many others are losing theirs?

• Are there business models that are succeeding that turn the business-as-usual, status quo models of most nonprofits on their head?

• What promise does behavioral science research hold for our sector? Who’s putting it to work successfully? What’s the current state of research in fundraising?

• Does building a winning new organization beat trying to fix up an old, losing one?

These are but some of the areas we hope to cover … and cover with as many case examples and empirical findings as possible.

Of course The Agitator isn’t alone in exploring and sharing the most promising paths to a better future. For example, in the U.K. where the sector is under heavy fire from the media and regulators there’s lots of soul searching underway with quite creative and helpful insights emerging.

We’ll report and comment on all that.

And, Tom and I will make a special effort to guide you to sources other than The Agitator we feel deserve your serious attention.

In our Starting Over #2, we’ll take up the subject of ‘New Rules/Old Rules’ and what has changed that deserves your attention and action.

What additional subjects/topics would you like us to take up in this series?

Roger