>>I would like to make a form based program in order to produce a monthly news letter for a club I belong to... has any one ever done this before? Is VFP report writer too limited for something like this? Would I be better off using Word?

Depends how you plan to distribute the newsletter. One good way is to host it on the web and simply send out the link to the email group whenever there's news.

If that will work, you could do it simply as a blog using one of the free or nearly free blog options out there.

Or even a Facebook page can work well.

For something more personalized that includes subscription management and emailing, consider a Joomla template such as one of these:

http://extensions.joomla.org/tags/newsletter

There are lots of free options that automate almost everything for you. All the content goes into a database so you can completely change the appearance by downloading and activating a new template. You can give logins to your authors who can each produce their content as an article that Joomla then dynamically assembles into the website with indexes, attractive layout etc. You could have something like this going on a cheap Linux hosting plan literally in minutes without having to even look at the CSS or HTML:

http://demo.hotjoomlatemplates.com/bokeh/index.php/about-hot-bokeh/extensions/acymailing