Ask HN: How to get a wordpress website built?

My friends have asked me to help them build a website for our small school alumni (about 500 people) and I was wondering the best way to go about doing this.

They need to have an index of people, a way to make donations, a hosted newsletter, and a couple more simple things.

I'm a developer but obviously I don't want (or have the time) to build it from scratch, so I thought I would use Wordpress and some plugins. But I have a couple questions regarding this:

Can you do enough frontend design to make a Wordpress site not look like a Wordpress site at all?

Who could I hire to do the front end design? Any recommendations?

How long would it take to put together the functionality of the site with a few plugins?

Is it a better idea to hire out and let someone else pick all the plugins and put it together?

Who could I hire to do this? Any recommendations?

What's the flexibility of adding new features if I hire out to build the functionality?

What would these things cost?