My issue is not with running out of merit, but with there not being that many meritorious posts from newbies.

I almost always spend all my source sMerits within 24 hours of them being replenished, and often even sooner than that. I always make sure I have a small handful of my own sMerits on hand specifically to award good newbies. While 1 or 2 merits might not make much difference to a Senior Member (for example), they can make a big difference to a newbie. I also have a custom patrol page set up which shows me recent newbie posts in only non-spammy boards - it pretty much excludes all altcoin boards and local boards which I can't read - which I view several times a day. I keep a close eye on Loyce's Report unmerited good posts to Merit Source thread, and I also look at all the merit giveaway threads I see.

I have a much lower threshold for meriting newbies. I'm happy to rank up any newbie who is here for the right reasons - to learn and discuss, and not just spam - even if their posts aren't that good.

Despite all this, I usually only find less than 10 newbies per month to send merit to.

Whenever a good newbie shows up, they have no problem rapidly acquiring merit and ranking up. I don't think the issues is the lack of merits for newbies, but rather the lack of newbies making good posts.