Word-of-mouth is definitely your best friend when building a Guild. If you build it (well) they will come! Happy members will make a strong guild bc they'll stay w you and eventually tell other folks about the great guild they're in and a huge portion of the recruiting will eventually do itself.
It's super important to have the right mix of people bc infighting, disagreements or an imbalanced group can wreck a guild; too-far advanced or bad dispositioned members who might not cotton to working with newer players won't make for happy members. If players feel slighted or impeded, they won't be happy. This kind of imbalance could affect swap or 1.9 threads, for instance. Conversely, the right group would foster an atmosphere where advanced players could help the newer folks and do some of your job with you.
Def have a couple of active members appointed as recruiters but have a consistent method everybody employs. Focus on your preferred demographic; for instance, w the last guild I built [Iceni Easy] I focused on noobs. New players are always looking for a guild and bc they don't have a lot of experience nor do they have a lot of biased views on how things should work. I had a couple of boilerplate recruiting messages I used and would surf the leaderboards and neighborhoods for folks w no guild affiliation. I also made the guild Invitation Only to discourage guild-jumpers. After a while, folks came to us.
Make your guild as appealing as possible, a place that fosters growth and opportunity and offers members everything they'll need to succeed. Idk if this fits w your FoE philosophy but I made Iceni a NO RULES guild and am very proud to say I never had to solicit treasury donations bc they did it on their own. Every Tuesday morning I unlocked all 4 levels of GE but never put pressure on anybody to do it.
I filled the forum w threads and tried to give them everything I could; trades, swaps of every denomination, Arc-only's, GbG, Events, Stix2Brix, a Hit List- I even started a newsletter [Iceni Official] that I regularly added everything FoE to; links, tips, tricks, guides, etc. I provided everything I wished I'd had back when I started playing- and then some. I encouraged folks to participate in guild administration and never held it against anybody when they felt overwhelmed and needed a break.
I hooked them up w a goods trader whenever they needed GB goods. I had an open-door policy and daily fielded a ton of messages and answered every one of them before I did my own stuff. I built every GB worth building so they'd have access to prints, then took them down when everyone was set. In short order I had almost 60 folks and only ever bumped 2, in the early days, for noncompliance ;[)
When I left last November to actually play again, lol, I arranged a weekend long Q&A-paloozza w a few of my Big Dog friends and tried to leave them in the best possible position. Membership is down a bit but for the most part the OGs are still there, we were really blessed w the mix of folks and the sense of community I worked to imbue still runs strong.
I had the opportunity to visit recently, recruited a few new members while I was there and started a 1.9 thread & companion forum w instructions and tool links. I still talk w several of them daily and hear from the rest pretty regularly; I pick up trades, contrib to GBs, answer questions, etc. Interestingly, although I appointed one of my captains Founder when I left, they've since opted to form a board of trustees and run the guild as a group. I'm incredibly proud of all of them.
I hope I've given you a few ideas that'll help you out, but feel free to ask me anything :[)
☆~B