Common docs - a cloud-computing solution?

[MacUser_Since_1986]

I am a volunteer and an executive committee officer for an annual public festival held near my hometown. The festival attracts thousands of people from a multi-state area. The festival is held in a state park; as such, there is no admission fee. Because admission is free and open to the public, the event is supported by numerous private donations funneled through a local 501c3 charitable organization.

In my role as exec. committee secretary, I work with the treasurer and others in tabulating and publicizing our list of donors. As such, we have a "master list" that must be maintained and updated. Therein lies the rub.

The event used to be administered by a local recreation director, but that position was eliminated. Over a couple of years, our committee evolved into existence. 2013 was our first year of actually running the entire festival, from fund-raising to scheduling, all by ourselves.

The list of personal donors and big-money corporate sponsors is substantial. Maintaining the list has proved to be a challenge. Originally, the list (a couple of tables in a Microsoft Word file, one for corporate and one for small donors) was the responsibility of the treasurer. But donations arrived through multiple channels, and some were not financially recorded because they were "in-kind services" rather than donations of actual money. So revising the list to reflect additional names and to correct the names on it became chaotic because there were multiple versions of the list-file floating around on the e-mail.

Is there a free, cloud-based solution for an administrative situation like this? Is there a way to store, say, "List Version 1" as first set-up, and then to post it to the centralized cloud, and then to load the list in Word, make corrections/additions and save it to the cloud as "List Version 2"?

We got as far as List Version 8, but some changes made in previous versions had been over-written with older, uncorrected versions. So it became a headache. All executive committee members are volunteers.

We want a setup to centralize the list in a location where designated officers can access it (presumably a cloud?) from Macs or PCs using MS Word. Changes can be made and saved to the central location so that all designated officers can see what's going on. As secretary, I need to access that list to publish it on a web-site and in an event flyer.

Can this work? And is there a reliable way to set it up for free?

[Brendan]

I was in a similar situation with a club. The option we settled on was creating a google account that club officers shared and used google docs for the data. Looking back, we probably didn't didn't need to share the same account. Another option could be to share a skydrive account (microsoft live) and save a regular Word docs there. Skydrive has automatic versioning as well.

[Brendan]

I just looked at my skydrive account and you can collaborate on a doc with different IDs

[MacUser_Since_1986]

Thanks for the tips!