Advice on where/who to start with?

I just landed a job as the Outreach Coordinator for a grant funded project through a university. Depending on how you count personnel we have 3-20 people who could have access to the CRM. We are recruiting high schools to be a part of the program. And those schools are in groups managed by larger district coordinators. Currently just have an excel file that is poorly managed and has scatter brained notes about when someone has reached out. I really want a simple way to keep track of who reached out to who, when they did that, what the response was, did we schedule trainings/school visits, what supplies do they need, etc. stuff along those lines. There’s not any technical sales, because it’s a grant program. It’s just like communication and scheduling needs. I need to keep costs down, because again it’s a grant funded program, but I also need to keep it super simple and hubspot looks a little overwhelming. Will I get used to it quickly? I have no prior experience with any crm things. I really like LessAnnoyingCRM from what I have seen of their free trail, but it’s not free past that. Any advice would be wonderful, I just really don’t like just using an excel sheet because I think it’s going to end up insanely cluttered with notes.