Rating system for a small club?

I just started a local chess club in my area, and I want to have a rating system in place, for the competitive spirit but also to help match players with others of similar skill.  But I have a few questions:

1. Is the Elo system still worthwhile to use for a small club?

2. If the white side has an advantage over black, then is it truly fair to adjust ratings based on just one game?  How would players decide who gets the white pieces?  Should players have to play more than one game against the same opponent before ratings can change, so they both get equal chance to play white?  How does this usually work in USFC/FIDE events?  I want to ensure that every rated game is fair for both players.

3. What is a good starting rating for the players?  If I start everyone with 1200, and it's a zero-sum system like Elo, then wouldn't it be virtually impossible for players to reach 2000 or above?  I want there to be enough points to go around, in order to allow the better players to get "titles" like Master, Grandmaster, etc (to encourage ranked play).  Should I lower the rating requirements for these titles, or start the players higher, or is my fear of "not enough points to go around" simply irrational?

I would very much like this club to seem professional, and get the players on the right path to competitive play and maybe eventually official FIDE/USCF tournaments.  So the closer I can re-create the "real chess experience", the better.

Thanks in advance for any advice you may have for me :)

1. Sure.

2. Sure. The program takes this into account. The colour division should be about 50-50 of course.

3. A program takes care of that. You probably want something like Swiss Perfect. Giving titles is a ridiculous notion, sorry. The starting point can be a problem, but again, the program can compensate for this. If one player always wins he gets a lot more ELO but the deduction for the losers is little. In fact if someone always wins there is no way to calculate the difference and the system would ''explode.'' So it's a bit like statistical software.

If you already know players have an established rating it can't hurt to use those either. For that, just look on your national chess website. If the players are not listed there they probably don't have a high rating anyway. Keep in mind you do not have to mimick national ratings: You are just creating a player pool of your own and see how they compare. In national events, these players can turn out to be a lot stronger than their club rating would suggest. That's just how it works. In practice, the difference between club and national rating isn't massive in a country like this, especially if both parties use the same program.

What "program" are you talking about?  I don't want to match players up myself..  They are just playing other random people from the club - It's not a tournament..  How do I ensure that they don't just get black all the time and feel like the ratings are inaccurate because of this?

I'm a math major, so all ratings stuff will be done on paper at the end of each session.  I don't plan on using any special programs unless it's 100% necessary.

Also, the players in my area barely know how the pieces move.  I doubt they will be nationally rated, haha..

There's a guy here who's written a handful of free programs, one of them is a chess club kit that includes a simple rating manager. I haven't tried it, but I have used one of his other programs. You might want to give it a shot - Hey, it's free.

https://sites.google.com/site/fredm/Home

says the site can not be found. could you repost it? 

Start them all at 400.

When player X wins against player Y as white, take 350+Yr (Y's rating) and put that into Xr running average of last 20 games.

If X wins as black, take 450+Yr and put that into the running 20.

If X loses as black against Y, take Yr - 350 and put that into Xr running 20 average.

Do similar for player Y.

If X draws as black against Y, take Yr +50 and put that into Xr running 20 average, and put Xr-50 into the Yr running average.

This can be done easily in Excel or other spread sheet.

The system is zero sum, so you must allow ratings to climb above 400 by giving people rating points for passing puzzle tests or proving they can do basic checkmates. The points in turn will spread around with games.

do you happen to have a google sheet set up like this that you could share with me. im not very good at excel. 

I guess Fred changed his URL a bit:

https://sites.google.com/view/fredm/home