These are ideas from many of the ARS chapters newsletters. Go over some of them and see if any would work for your chapter. You d be surprised how this kind of dialogue initiates other ideas from your Board Members as well and brings about renewed enthusiasm in the group to do more to help. Even though not all ideas work for all chapters, your chapter can only benefit just by talking about it. This summer more chapters communicated with their members by sending a newsletter in mid-season even when no meetings were held.
Many chapters now have a summer cutting exchange.
This offers a summer get-together for chapter members and gives new members an opportunity to meet the chapter members. The extra meeting does mean another newsletter or at least a notice. But this summer time meeting helps to keep the enthusiasm alive. In the past many chapters had no summer activities. This allowed new members who joined in late spring to lose interest in the Society even before they had ever attended a meeting or received information from the chapter.