It’s time to meet another one of the non-profits that your hosting fees support!

TAS is a Palos Verdes Art Center non-profit cooperative of more than 70 area artists in California who work together to show their artwork at one or both galleries. The gallery participates in many special PVAC events during the year and in May and November hosts a runway show of wearable art. They boast an ever-changing collection of fine art for home, gifts or office. Shop these galleries for ceramics, jewelry, sculpture, paintings and one-of-a-kind wearable art.

They have two galleries. The one located at PVAC shows a selection of work from all participating artists with the exhibitions changing monthly. The Avenue location showcases the work of three to four artists every six weeks, with group shows during the holidays, July and August. Every day a different artist staffs their galleries, and all of the members of the collective participate in some aspect of gallery operation.

DrakNet supports the collective with steeply discounted (80%) hosting - which means that you have invested in the arts! I bet you had no idea you were so cultural!

DrakNet’s made our third Kiva loan of the month!

We noticed that we were loaning almost exclusively to women so far (which, since this is a woman owned company isn’t exactly surprising), and we didn’t want to be sexist so we looked for a man from a new geographical area that we hadn’t loaned to yet.

For our last Kiva loan in April (we think) we chose Farhod Khomidov from Isfara, Tajikistan.

Farhod Khomidov is 27 years old. He is married with two kids.

Farhod provides taxi services with his vehicle. He has been in this business for five years. Farhod is a rather diligent and hard-working young man. He is ready to work from early morning until late at night in order to keep his customers and obtain new ones.

Now, Farhod’s car needs repair. That is why Farhod requests 600.00 US Dollars for a term of 12 months. Farhod has proven himself as a reliable client and promises to repay the loan in a timely manner. He thanks all who support him.

We chose Farhod because we’ve experienced the pain of car repairs (as well as the pain of having them cost more than you have to spend) and could sympathize greatly - and when we experienced it, our family’s life didn’t depend on the car working to make a living.

We’ve also had news on the first loan we made to Amela. Her loan has been disbursed to her and Zene za Zene International will begin posting updates to the site regarding how she’s doing.

So, we host a lot of groups at no charge. We also realize that some people could think that’s a marketing shtick (or, worse, a marketing shtick that’s not true designed to sell hosting accounts while just hosting one or two domains at no charge), so part of what we wanted to do with this blog was introduce you all to some of the organizations that we - meaning you - help support.

DrakNet’s roots as a company are in philanthropic endeavors - the company was started because I had a non-profit site, and I had a good deal on hosting. In 1996, I started reselling accounts to help defray the costs of the non-profit site, and in July of 1998 we had enough accounts that I thought it was a good idea to create a site just for them with information. Eventually, we had so many accounts that it made more sense to get a server, and eventually DrakNet migrated from a side endeavor to a full-fledged hosting company.

DrakNet’s roots, though, are still alive and well. We never forgot how we started, and over the past 11 years have remained committed to that first focus - supporting organizations with free services so that they can focus their raised money on helping.

The Ferret Aid Society was one of our very first non-profit sites hosted here at DrakNet at no charge.

Located in Mississauga, Ontario, The Ferret Aid Society is a ferret rescue organization run 100% on a volunteer basis. They have no paid employees - they do have a lot of cute ferrets that need homes, though, since they are a “no kill” shelter.

The Ferret Aid Society relies on the donations of animal lovers to keep them running, and we’re glad to do something to help out the fuzzies so that donated funds go to saving ferrets, and not paying hosting fees.

Stop by The Ferret Aid Society’s web site, and marvel at what good use your hosting fees have gone to (and make a donation while you’re there!)

We’ve made a second Kiva loan in April thanks to an upswing in PayPal payments before end end of the month!

Our second loan of April 2008 is to Bridget Uhebagwi of Nigeria:

Bridget Uhebagwi is a typical business woman. She sells bread in Ireke Community, Lagos State, Nigeria. She was born there and lives there even now. Bridget acquired her business skills many years ago and has been in this business since1988. At 53 years of age, with 8 children, she still has the energy needed for business. According to her, selling bread is the only skill she has acquired and, she treasures it. She is requesting a loan of $700 to buy more bread to sell.

We’ve chosen Bridget because the woman has eight children, and runs a business. I only have one kid and own a business, so her stamina is something I admire greatly - and envy quite a bit!

To read more about Bridget, you can visit her loan page here (she still needs more lenders!), or you can keep up with all our Kiva loans and their progress by visiting DrakNet’s Kiva Lender Page.

So, we got this blog up, and started writing in it, and realized it would be somewhat boring if all we ever did was write about tips and tricks for your web site because, frankly, DrakNet does stuff that’s a lot more interesting than just that.

One of the things that kind of defines us is how much free stuff we give away. When other hosting companies give discounts, we go a step further and host a large number of non-profits at absolutely no hosting charge at all, and as a consequence, we have a large client base of do-gooders that are clients only in the service sense of the world because we, and our paying clients, contribute to their voice and their mission. This category of posts is going to profile some of them, as well as some of the things that they do, as well as expound on why we decided to do them.

Our first post is going to introduce a monthly feature here - recently, DrakNet began charging fees to clients that pay via PayPal and who refuse to put credit cards on file. It makes our life a tad bit harder but we understand that some folks prefer it and most folks were willing to grumble a little and pay that fee. Hopefully, this will make you feel a little better about what we’re doing with that bit of PayPal cash we get.

First thing in the morning, I make current event rounds on the Internet, and that includes a stop at CNN. This week, I read an article on a non-profit called Kiva that makes micro-loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries thanks to investors in the United States and abroad. For as little as $25, you can contribute to bettering the life of someone living in a poverty stricken country directly. With Kiva, the rate of return is Karma - this isn’t something you do to make interest. It’s something you do to make the world a better place. And lucky for me, they prefer PayPal payments.

So, after perusing their web site, DrakNet has signed up as a Kiva Lender. Once a month, we’ll take those Alternative Payment Fees in Paypal, and lend them to a struggling entrepreneur in a developing country. We’ll profile who we chose, and why, in a blog post, and you can visit our Lender page at any time to see who your TOS-Breaking has helped.

For April, DrakNet has chosen to lend to Amela Colic:

Amela is 24 years old, a married woman from the town of Zenica. Her husband is a seasonal worker and he can earn approximately 700 KM (about US$ 550). Amela works at the market selling clothes. This is her first loan in the amount of US$ 1200 and Amela plans to use it to buy additional clothing for sale. Her goal is to invest the money in new clothes, and to earn additional money for her and her husband.

We’ve chosen Amela in honor of one of our more famous hosted sites, Skippy’s List. Skippy’s List was written when Skippy was stationed in Bosnia and “was bored”. It became somewhat of an Internet comedic phenomenon over the years (even before the term viral was coined), coming and going in waves of popularity. One of its most recent waves of popularity happened to be on Digg and thanks to Skippy’s List, we found out that our company actually can handle the Digg Effect with some panic, but while still serving pages for everyone on a shared hosting platform - something not a lot of hosts achieve.

We wish Amela luck, urge you to visit Skippy’s List if you have never read it, and hope that you enjoy the new monthly feature. If you would like to become a Kiva Lender, drop us a comment or send us an email, and we’ll send you an invitation so we can keep track of, and profile, what all our folks are doing.