Hi Joe,
I can understand how one would not want to pay for a system that you might not use. If your society has been working fine with Excel, then you could probably very easily customize a Microsoft Access database to do most of what you are looking for.
Software packages are great, and the support that you get with them saves a lot of time and headache. But if your institution is not ready to pay for a supported system, I would suggest playing around with Access.
Cheers.
Ben
