CRM for personal development non-profit

Howdy CRM gurus.

I volunteer with a non-profit that is growing and looking to get out of "spreadsheet hell" to centralize data and processes. This non-profit works in personal development: it provides summer youth programs in 10 communities across the Midwest (and growing) and hosts 5 major events for adults per year. All of this is done by an army of volunteers spread amongst the communities and two full time staff.

The NP uses a variety of platforms: volunteer background checks, training, youth/adult event registration, email blasts, etc. Current processes involve checking statuses in all of these platforms and downloading spreadsheets to manipulate data for "reporting" and sending emails – it is incredibly labor-intensive. These platforms are the defacto in their respective spaces, but don't have any pre-built integrations for any CRM systems (that I can find). Ideally, we'd automate pulling data into a centralized system, but obviously that would take some customization (which I'm comfortable with).

I've looked through the Salesforce docs and watched a few hours of videos on the SF NPSP and it looks like it would be a good fit. The household structure is a good match for the volunteers and participants of this program. The director has it in his head that SF is going to cost $15k a year, but my understanding of the NPSP licensing does not support that. I've also looked through the various open-source platforms, but haven't found anything impressive given the constraints of the organization.

My background: I have experience with implementing, customizing, and automating around a couple different ERP systems in small business and have exposure to the CRM built into those systems. I am now a software engineer for a SaaS company in a different niche. I have no qualms about moving data between platforms and automating processes.

So I guess my questions are: * Is a CRM platform the best platform to act as a centralized system for data and process? * Is SF NPSP as good as it looks? * How much does it actually cost? * Are there any other platforms that we really need to look at?