Ecommerce site needed to help save primates!

Budget: $500 to $1,000

Spec sheet for website designer of monkeyfriendly.com
Concept behind monkeyfriendly.com.  
1-Have a site where people from all disciplines can connect with each other to save primates.  For example, if a grad student doing a project in Thailand wants to access a primatologist in Canada, they could find each other by way of this site.  This does not make the site any more complex, rather each member would be able to contact each member via details posted on their individual member page.  A search option on the site would allow searches by key words so people could find one another.
2-Provide e-commerce to people and organizations that wouldn’t typically have access to it, and let the money raised go to fund primate causes.  For example, a primate sanctuary in Africa could sell items in the online store and the money raised would go to help save primates.   The site needs to be designed so that multiple sellers can sell on the site.  See www.Etsy.com for samples of multiple sellers selling under one cohesive site.
Important points:
I have a strict deadline to have this complete before the end of summer.
Please only sign on for the project if you are able to design it in all aspects and have weekly calls over the duration of the project to assess items as we go along, so I can make my deadline.  Thank you.

Look of the Design:
Modern, fresh, fun.  Light colors-mainly white, orange, green and light blue.  Nothing near like how it is now with black on background.
I think there should be some moving images on the front screen, moving photos and a place to post a video on the front, home page.  This way it has the “look” of a flash site but can be html.    Http://www.chimphaven.org for an example of a similar site.
For tabs, I am picturing for the main headings: A Home, Members, News/Projects, Education, Action, Monthly question and Shop tabs.  Within each tab there would be a pull-down menu to access more and we could develop each tab.  For example, under education, there would be a “kids corner” on the pull-down menu so a page would come up with kids-related info and so on for each tab.  I need it designed in a customized way so  I can add more categories to the drop down menus if I need to.  
A site that makes good use of bigger, bolder tabs up top and then smaller tabs below is:
http://goodmenproject.com/sex-relationships/why-egalitarianism-failed-my-marriage/
It just does not show a drop down menu within each tab.  That would allow me to expand more if I had drop downs within each tab.

The “monthly question” tab is just really a blog post or conversation thread that can be a tab within the site.  Again, see how chimphaven.org has a blog tab.  
 See this link for an example of a conversation thread.  Essentially one  question or topic is posted, then multiple people can respond to it.  The difference on monkeyfriendly is I want the people that respond to have a little icon with their picture come up and then their contact info listed, since this format looks very bland here.  Use this for concept, not design.
http://edge.org/conversationsin/tags/Annual%20Question

A key concept behind the idea of monkeyfriendly.com is to create a site where people from different disciplines can connect with one another.  So it is important to code each member that joins in a category, so they can search for other members.  For example, when someone joins we need to assign them a category so a “banker” can search for an “primatologist” or whatever.  
Functionality:
* needs to be customizable for future changes.  Ideally to save money and time-I am looking for a designer that can customize existing e-commerce software that they have so we don’t have to start from scratch.
http://www.Etsy.com
This site shows how multiple members can join the site and then sell in an ecommerce platform under one main site.  Kind of like an ebay store, where someone can post their items for sale under the main umbrella of ebay-except this site is nowhere near as complex.
Monkeyfriendly needs to be the same in terms as functionality as etsy.  Each member needs to have their own page to sell items on, and post a video clip and photos of their own.  They need to be able to “become a member” so they can upload all their own material and images and do their own selling.  My idea is to perhaps come up with one main template of a “monekyfriendly page” and then each member would get this for their page. That would make coding easier for you too.  I’d want a brief intro, why they are monkeyfriendly, what category they are in (people, products, primates, and then more detail within each category too), a place to upload a video on their member page, and then their ecommerce store items and contact details.  
Important features: search tab, approval tab on the back end so I can approve whoever tries to sign up, SSL for secure shopping, wish list for each member so people can donate items if they want, group calendar where each MF member can post events into one main calendar on the site. A “track progress” item like you have in gradsave would be ideal to have on each member’s page, so they can post a fundraising goal and see how far they’ve come.  Competitions page, whereby I can post a competition and receive responses from people. Action campaigns are an important part of the site.  If we can have a bunch of people be able to sign a campaign and send it to a designated email that is ideal. Step by step instructions on how to post and sell items or how to use that feature on the site should be spelled out like gradsave.com has (step 1, 2, 3).  Adopt a primate page would need to be created like a store page but independent so not attached to any one person’s store page.  Any member would need to be able to post to this page and it would be the same type of format you would already have for the ecommerce part except instead of selling an item, they would be selling a symbolic adoption.  So buyer would click on an image of a primate they want an adoption kit for, then “add to cart” then the member organization would ship out a kit.  I am picturing you creating a page for this identical to what you’d already be creating for members to sell their online items in.  Except any member can post to it, it is not assigned to one member alone.
Since the tagline for monkeyfriendly is “people, products and projects that support primates” I want to be able to have a member post a project.  For example:  Gorilla trekking in Africa.  Then in order for the project to take place, let’s say they define 3 categories on the page as mandatory-the project needs a 1)financial backer, 2) primatologist 3) assistant.  And then each project could not begin until the 3 mandatory fields were checked off by the monkeyfriendly member.  You see this a lot as a basic idea of website-where they ask you for your name, address and phone and mark these fields as mandatory. I want members to be able to have this option so they can “launch a project” once they get all the mandatory people required.
 
Technical Details:
Designer does not need to create a monkeyfriendly logo-that is already designed and can be given to chosen web designer.  Monkeyfriendly is currently a flash site hosted at wix.com.  Http://www.monkeyfriendly.com.  Domain name bought through godaddy.com.  
Please note, I do not want it to be a flash site anymore, rather an html-based one that is searchable via search engines.  It will be designed from scratch now, and the current members will be asked to join once it is designed so members can sign up for themselves.  
Web designer would be in charge of moving it to a new location to be hosted.
I’m sure there are other small things as we go along, but this is the overall theme of the site, then as we go along we can have calls to answer specific questions back and forth.
I will be able to take a load off the web designer by writing a lot of content for each of the tabs, such as news, events, etc. but the designer needs to lay the foundation.