Need some Expert Advice

Hello. I’m posting here as I’ve been given a lot of different suggestions on what to us. MU..Thesis…or other blogs.

Here is what I need to do.

I have a local website in my community, and want to give local groups in my community (churches, schools, groups like joggers, birdwatchers etc) their own personalized blog. I want to have one spot on my site on the home page where users can see all the blogs and easily check them out.

What I would like to do, is to start with several looks (themes) for the different types of business. As an example I would get a theme made for churches. Now here is what I need.

I want to show Church A, the basic look. They make some changes, and tell me what features they want and don’t want. We make the changes then give them their admin and away they go.

Church B decides they want different features, so we make those changes then get them up and running with their site.

We have a theme for schools…and we need to be able to personalize each blog to give each school the features they want.

We are not wordpress experts, so I’m wanting some help to build the basics, but want something we can manage and personalize, so I don’t have to hire developers to get each site up and going.

I have a server that is WP friendly ready to go, so all these blogs will be hosted on one server.

If anyone has any suggestions/experience with what I’m trying to do, would love to hear from you.

Thanks in advance,
Duane