Cool Tool for Club Management?

At the ISA, we use various free services on the Internet to enhance our little R/C community - a website, a Yahoogroup, various bits of free software, and an on-line photo gallery. However, one area where the Internet revolution has escaped us is the management of the club's membership records.

As with most most clubs, we store membership data in a spreadsheet. However, it's only accessible to one person, when there are several who need to use it. For example, the membership secretary needs to add or update names and addresses, the Yahoogroup admin will want to update email addresses, and the newsletter editor will need to create mailing labels.

What's needed is an online database which doesn't need rocket science to set up. The good news is that these are now beginning to appear.

Zoho Creator is one I've looked at, as it's free. It's similar in principle to Microsoft Access, except that everything is stored on-line. All you need is a web browser, and the relevant permissions to view or update the data. There is no need to install any software on your computer, no worries about backups, no distinction between users of Macs, PC's or Linux.

Currently Zoho has limited features, and is still a little buggy. However when it matures, it could well become a really cool admin tool.