Need Some Feedback in Consideration of a Potenial Purchase

[MacaroniDuck]

We are a small (~500 members and growing), local community hobby group. I've been searching for some time now for a hosted or pre-built solution for a community web site. We are looking for most of the standard features like user profiles, forums, subgroups, events, etc. We've struggled to find a singular solution that meets all of our needs. The one sticking point that comes up continually is this:

We need to be able to have SubGroups that can be private and can create their own private events. Additionally, all events on the site, both in the main group and SubGroups must be able to recurring events (i.e. "every other Monday", "Every Tuesday @ 6pm", etc.) We also need people to be able to RSVP/Signup for events.

Like so many of the other solutions we've looked at vBulletin can't actually do that out of the box. SubGroups, for example, can't create their own events, though I've seen that there are mods available that provide both that and RSVP functionality.

It's important to note that there are only a couple of us working on this project on a volunteer basis. While we both have a technical background, neither of us is fluent in PHP, CSS or any of the tech that would allow us to do advanced customization.

Our current stance, though not written in stone, is to develop our site in Drupal. All of the functionality we seek is available through mods and it's free. The drawback is we're building something that only we, or someone else we train can administer.

The attraction to vBulletin is that it is mostly functional out of the box and has a user-friendly interface that many could pick up easily. The drawback is that a) we'd have to add mods to have the functionality we need and b) It's not inexpensive (at least not considering our almost non-existent budget).

I'd be interested in hearing any feedback from others in similar situations or who might have helpful insight. Specifically, would it be worth it to look into vBulletin, despite the need to use mods? Would we be stuck with the basically vanilla look of vBulletin unless we found something with very strong theme/CSS skills? any other helpful feedback would also be welcomed.

Probably the biggest sticking point for us is that it would appear that we would have to front the money to even begin to see if it will work for us. I've looked through the demo and feel that I could comfortably learn the ins and outs of administering the site as is. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to install it someplace where I could tinker on an extended basis (demo only lasts 24 hours) as well as install some plug-ins to be SURE we could have the functionality we need.

We simply can't afford to throw out $300 only to find we can't use the product. If anyone is aware of a potential "sandbox" environment or other way we can find out if this is a potential solution for us, please do let us know!