One thing that was done by Josh on the old UK server some years back was to write an "Official faction payday bot"which would reward official faction players (and the faction itself would get an extra bonus on any bank vessel they had) for activity on each of their ships over the previous month - with players who used fighters getting more per hour than those who flew capital ships (This was done to offset a "lolcaps" style of gameplay that had started to pervade the server back then, with virtually all fights & RP being between cruiser-class vessels and above).
Perhaps something similar could be done for here? Of course, nowadays the faction payouts could likely go onto the faction's main player base if they have one, while the players would still get a cut. There'll have to be a balance done though, high enough to make it worth it for players to login with each of their official faction characters, but not so high that it makes trading characters worthless.
I really dont think "giving cash" would improve overall server activity. If ppl want csh, they should work for it, in a way or another. Instead "shinies" cold be more of an incentive, things that cannot be bought.
What is definition of active member? It used to be player with at least hour logged per month, is it still the same or did it change since activity checks are now made per quarter, so for example to three hours per quarter or one hour per quarter?
This seems like a pretty fair solution. Though, Im not sure if officialdom really brings 'plenty of perks'
Just one thing: The faction activity tracker in the way it is right now is sadly not very helpful. Its not going to help in figuring out how much flight time has happened within the last 3 months for a faction and which is worse, there is currently no way to see which or how many different ships have 'caused' the activity and which havent been logged at all. It would be great if these things could be taken care of (better sooner than later).