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Hi Manny,
This won't help in your situation, but our Club is run entirely different to the 'norm'.
Ours is a relaxed 'non-formal' observing group. We don't hold the standard meetings usually associated with clubs and organisations. We have chats about ideas, etc ('meeting' stuff) as casual conversation out on the viewing field whilst going about our observing.
The good part is that meetings don't interupt our observing time, everyone is involved (even visitors get to throw suggestions in), and it is much more relaxed.
If it is cloudy, then we sit inside with a cuppa and talk about club stuff in amongst gereneral conversation.
We don't have guest speakers. We save all that side of things for our 2 Astronomy Camps each year.
What we do, is have a teaching talk whilst observing. Pre-selected objects are looked at while the objects are talked about. Everyone points their scopes to the object and the speaker points out detail, size, distance etc.
So far I have been doing the talking/observing tours but anyone is welcome to do it.
As for 'Public', we don't have a seperate agenda for visitors. They just join in and look thru the scopes with us, and are welcome on any club night. Members are happy to let visitors look thru their scopes, plus we set up the club scope for visitors to use.
We find that this casual relaxed style of Club works well, and visitors and new members feel involved, and not left out or made to feel like a visitor or new member.
It also does away with the old fears of being in a 'Club' with its arguments, dictatorships, quibbles etc.
It works for us, but it may not work for every club. Every group is different.
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