Might pool your resources and buy a server, especially if one of your members is able to run it and keep it functioning. I don't know much about it myself. But I don't know why finding hosting should be a real problem either. There are lots of very radical websites around. Hard to believe yours would have a real problem. Anyway, good luck!
Instead of buying a server, you might consider leasing finding a local business or non-profit that is upgrading their hardware and see if they're willing to part with servers they are retiring and see if they're willing to give you one or more of the servers they're retiring. They have to pay an electronic waste disposal fee to get rid of the server anyway, so giving it to someone is actually a cheaper option.
If they're smart, they'll pull the hard drives from it before giving it to you, so you'll have to buy those, but hard drives are cheap. Once you have the server, it's a matter of you or one of your friends footing the bill for the electricity and making sure your ISP allows you to host your own server (a lot of personal accounts don't allow for it, so you may have to look at a business account).
Of course, then you have to learn how to admin a server, which is simple when everything goes smoothly and unbelievably stressful the rest of the time...