As a co-organizer for the. oc yorkie group I may be a little bias but I love our group. We have a core group about 23 that regularly attend and we have a lot of people that come in whenever they have time(about 300 members signed up on the site). We do have a membership fee which is about 25 for the whole year and we have 2 events a month, one indoor and outdoor. We use the money to pay the cost of the meetup site and for other things as well such as food for the events and other things members can use such as party equipment (platters, cake stands, food trays) all which is accessible to anyone in the group who would like to borrow it. We regularly post the expenses on our meetup site so everyone knows how much money we have and where it's going.
we recently purchased multiple baby gates that interconnect so all our baby's can run off leash when we host outdoor events.
We have training classes together that people sign up for (we negotiate deals for this too) and we also are working on have some of the dogs in our group therapy certified so we can do group hospital visits. We host doggie birthday parties (we have one this Sunday) and are looking at working with a rescue to help them fundraise. A lot of our members are local but we do have a few that drive more than an hour away and come when they can.
we host our events at parks , dog boutiques( that give us discounts), peoples houses, & we're also trying out a baseball game this year for bark in the park. We do potlucks sometimes and bbq's when the weathers nice. we also hAve a member that's a photographer that likes to take photos of he dogs at the events which all the ladies love.
We've managed to make the group self sufficient so we don't have to pay all the meetup fees out of our pocket. We have a lot of members that donate at the events also usually a few dollars here and there which really helps.
I think starting up your own meetup group would be fun! Good luck!