There is no real tools ingame for finding an alliance or advertising your alliance. So relying on random joins from ingame is a terrible idea. Do you have any idea how many alliances are out there with open joining?
Do you understand that the most active and motivated players wont be joining from the random ingame join, but will find guilds from advertisements on discord recruitment servers, forums, reddit, or facebook? The vast majority of those random joins from ingame will be casual players hoping for free rewards from a clan. They will leave once they realize they arent getting free rewards or are expected to participate.
Also, if you are struggling but have a core base of active and committed players, consider merging your active group into a larger alliance or another guild. Don't punish yourself and your actives by demanding to be in charge, realize that a merger is often what is best for EVERYONE.
I was an officer and merged my guild into a larger alliance and our leader and officers lost position for a little while but they were the most active and motivated and became officers and leaders again, our entire guild grew and we went from not clearing HSTR to beating it in 20 minutes.
Do more and get more. Or keep relying on CG to do something until everyone quits the game or leaves for greener pastures.