This is a brief report of an August 2008 seminar, sponsored by the Tangata Whenua, Community & Voluntary Sector Research Centre on possibilities for a sector-wide survey in Aotearoa New Zealand. It included a presentation by Lester Salamon (Centre for Civil Society Studies, Johns Hopkins University) on the US sector ‘Listening Post’ project. ‘Taking the PULSE’ refers to documenting the prospects, understandings and learnings from sector experience.