Help! Best contact database out there?

Hello all,

I need to find a great contact database for use in a university administration setting. ACT! and GoldMine are sales-based, and therefore have a bunch of useless/extraneous functions. I need something to keep track of gov't contacts at municipal, provincial and federal level as well as people from other institutions. I need to be able to have dynamic contacts (people added to groups automatically when I enter their info) and need it to work back and forth with excel, word, and outlook. (Act! requires an add-on that costs more than the program itself to be able to import excel files.) All of our contact databases are currently in excel, and need to be transferred to a more comprehensive program, where we can also store docs such as bios, photos, details of last meeting, involvement in current dossiers, etc. Must be easy to use for a non-tech savvy environment. Any suggestions? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!