Good morning, I have extensive experience implementing and customizing Zoho CRM. In addition, I have a company in which I work to exploit the services of Zoho CRM as a Consulting Partner, this means that I also offer the services that any other freelance, but also with the seal of quality of Zoho offers its partners , in which it guarantees that the work is carried out by a specialist, who knows his product thoroughly.
I think that the phase analysis described is correct, in the first phase there would be no problem in working with contacts separating them in the classification by type of contact. For this we can generate a new field, in which describe the contact choosing from the dropdown any of the four (Donors, Trippers, Board, Staff).
I understand that the information you want to import is one that you already have in some current system. There would be no problem in making imports. It is a usual practice, we can use existing fields for it, or use some created expressly for it.
Facing phase two, what he proposes are perfectly integrable works. Zoho has products such as Zoho Forms to integrate forms on websites and feed the CRM.
To send news regularly, we also have possibilities like Zoho Campaigns, which allows us to manage a mailing list, create newsletters, and send the information we want to our users.
We will be happy to help you with this project if you wish.