Any advice for a chess club???

I have been sponsoring my middle school chess club for a few years now.  I have roughly 20-30 kids in my room any given morning.  I have run mini tournaments within the club and we play bughouse on Fridays.  What I am looking for is any advice on how to really push my kids to get better and still really enjoy coming every morning.

great thought thanks!!

Any other suggestions???? 

I would perhaps try and get them interested in this site.

Also, I might convince them to enter in local tournaments, nothing big or expensive, but just something to get their feet wet.  If money is an issue, offer to meet half the cost or something like that.  If they can't afford the $50 it might take (just throwing out a number), maybe encourage them to go around raising money for themselves, almost like the girl scouts.  Not only does this teach them socialization skills, but them they will be more likely to play hard in the tourney if it is their money that they put into it.

I have gotten a few of my club members to get chess.com accounts (about 8 or 10).  However, they seem to like Live Chess the most.  Unfortunately, based on what my mentors have told me and my own experience, I know that they are not learning nearly as much as they could if they played more turn based games.  A few have joined our group which is good because they then can see some of the best matches from our higher boards.  

well, see if you can get them to join turn-based tourneys.  That will get their feet wet and they won't want to lose in a tournament.

true.... I made a group for our chess club and I have set up a turn based tourny for them.  Hopefully that will help generate a little more competition within the club.  I would like to maybe post a weekly update of all their ratings so they have something to continually try to strive for something. 

That's a good idea.

I would be open to any other suggestions.  We are heading into summer, so i am definitely going to send home a flyer that promotes using chess.com over the summer months.  Anyone else???

first of all. iam  chess student of 50 before. and really hard to handle. the best thing is to make an activity that is not so related in chess then make it related. u can try team tournaments and the winner has prices. u can also do a tune up games with other schools. but the best thing is to join them in tournaments outsider the clubs. let them to meet kids with high rating and really known to your country.

before we had invited GM wesley so just to play simul and ofcourse the kids were happy. that is what u called inspirational game not talk.

How about giving out tactical puzzles to take home with them?  Some of the kids will be self-motivated because they get satisfaction from solving these.  Other kids will resist having "homework".  To encourage all of the kids, you might have them compete for points that show their relative standings, and/or points that can be traded in for prizes.

I use the tactics workbook below when teaching kids and teenagers (good for adults too).  It has the perfect format, 6 puzzles per page, by theme.  Answer key in the appendix.

http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Tactics-Workbook-Al-Woolum/dp/0965906701/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381840794&sr=1-12&keywords=chess+tactics