If you are striving to be the best Fundraiser you can be, here's something you should definitely do: be a donor to other organizations.
In order to really understand what your donors want, you need to experience being a donor firsthand.
You can read it in a book and hear it in a class, but learning firsthand what it's like to be a donor will give you a much deeper understanding of what your donors want and give you a better idea of how to give it to them.
Donors want to be promptly and genuinely thanked for their gifts.
You'll be much better attuned to this if you are experiencing being a donor yourself.
You need to know what it feels like to get a letter (or not) and have the letter be warm and sincere (or not).
It will sharpen your senses to the ways you treat your own donors.
Once you have the experience of not being properly thanked for a gift, it will likely shift your thinking permanently about how you want to acknowledge your own donors.
You need to know what it feels like to have high hopes in an organization.
You need to experience how other organizations work to build a relationship (or not) with you.
These experiences will give you an incredible insight into what donors want.
If you use this information to tweak your donor relations, you will likely set your organization dramatically apart from other organizations in your community who don't place importance on giving their donors a good experience.
So, be a donor.
Find two or three other nonprofits that have a cause you believe in and send them a gift.
Then get ready to learn from the experience!