Well...
$40 a month is still rather expensive.
I wouldn't mind donating to keep the server up (maybe 25-50% of that, heck, that's about what the typical subscription fee for a MMO is), but my bank account is basically empty right now from paying for tuition and books, and that won't change until I get my FASFA check sometime before the end of this year.
However, Minecraft really isn't my primary concern anymore, because I doubt I'll have much time to play at all in the coming months anyway.
Worst case scenario, you can go back to hosting the server, and we have to deal with dynamic IPs and unforeseen down times.
I have parts left over from an old computer that I don't use much anymore; which might be able to host a server. It's an old Athlon 64 x2 clocked at 3.0GHz, with 3GB RAM, but no dedicated video card. The 8600GT I had in there died, so it can only run from the crappy integrated Nvidia chip. The HDD also died, but I can use a spare external HDD (320GB USB 2.0, if I remember correctly) as a boot drive for Linux. Yeah, it's slow, but I would be comfortable running the 'server' 24/7.
However, my upload speed is total crap, at just under 1 megabit per second, which isn't much, especially when I'm using the internet. My connection also isn't exactly the most reliable; my modem has been known to restart itself for no apparent reason, which seems to be happening more and more often lately. Although I have a dynamic IP, I don't even think it changes once a month; it doesn't happen often at all, so at least that isn't an issue.
Although I have, admittedly, never run a server before, so I'm not too experienced with this sort of stuff. But that does remind me, a few members here run their own servers, which are more likely the better option, if necessary.