[Leaplist] Hosting and/or local colo for non-profit org

[Damien McKenna]

I'm working on a project for a non-profit organization and was  
wondering if y'all had recommendations for a) hosting (shared, vps?),  
or knew of any local co-location companies that gave discounts to non- 
profit orgs?

The app is being done in Rails and due to speed issues I'm reluctant  
to recommend Dreamhost (who I'm currently with).

They're in line for a donation of a 3U server and if they could get a  
good deal they'd like to go that route, but shared hosting or a VPS  
would probably be fine too.  How have you guys found VPSs in terms of  
app speed vs shared hosting, and have you found any specific shared  
hosts to run Rails apps faster than others (like I said, DH is slow)?

Thanks

-- 
Damien McKenna - Husband, father, geek.
damien at mc-kenna.com - http://www.mc-kenna.com/