Hostway Teams Up with Northwestern University's Dance Marathon

Hostway Corporation donates Web hosting to support Northwestern University's Dance Marathon website and expand its online capabilities.

Chicago, Illinois, March 2, 2006—Dance Marathon, currently in its 32nd year at Northwestern University, is one of the world's largest student-run philanthropies. To reach their 2006 goal of exceeding their previous year's fund raising total of $625,000, they wanted to expand their online capabilities. Hostway, a leading provider of Web hosting and managed services, was eager to help this Chicago-area university in its philanthropic fund raising efforts by providing them free Web hosting to support the official Dance Marathon website.

“Hostway is always eager to find opportunities to give back to the community, and Dance Marathon's success and commitment to its beneficiaries is extremely impressive to us,” said John Lee, vice president of global marketing and general manager for Hostway. “We feel like the lucky ones being asked to be involved with this event.”

The professional website developer that created Dance Marathon's site referred Hostway to the Dance Marathon executive board as a reliable hosting provider. Hostway currently hosts the Web developer's company site. He saw Hostway as a perfect fit to support this philanthropic organization because of Hostway's record of providing free Web hosting to organizations such as Recruiters for Katrina and Baylie for Brains.

“We solicited Hostway's services because they were a local company proven for reliability,” said David Kim, Dance Marathon executive board member. “Our old server would crash, and Dance Marathon would lose money because people could not donate online. We're incredibly happy with the service we've received this year.”

Dance Marathon now includes 300 pairs of dancers—each couple raising at least $750 for the honor of dancing—and thousands of student volunteers. Since its inaugural year, Dance Marathon has raised more than $6.5 million for various charities.

During its 30-hour run on the weekend of March 3rd, more than 15,000 spectators are expected to visit the Norris University Student Center where the Dance Marathon takes place. They can support the dancers and take part in events such as a kid's carnival and a 5k run.

For more information on Dance Marathon events, check out the calendar at www.nudm.org.