Palma High School graduate Greg Classen runs an online T-shirt store that fuses his passions for art, humanitarian work and business.

"He wants to use the things that he can do to better the world in his own way," said Laurie Classen, Greg's mother.

Greg, 19, a sophomore at UC Santa Barbara, donates $1 from each shirt sale to Last Mile Operations. The Los Angeles-based disaster relief organization sent teams of volunteers to areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia.

Since he opened the online store in February, Greg has sold about 200 shirts. His T-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies feature his original artwork, inspired by nature and music. The shirts are printed at Artrageous, a screenprinting shop in Sand City, and Greg's mother packages and ships the orders.

Each shirt sale earns Greg a slim profit. So far, he's invested all of those profits in materials for new shirts, he said. Laurie Classen, who ran her own art business for eight years, says her son gets much more than money out of the deal.

"It's been a huge learning experience," Classen said.

The hardest part about running a T-shirt business? Marketing, Greg says.

"A lot of it is word-of-mouth," Greg said. Most of his shirt sales have been to his friends and their friends within the state. More than 400 friends and fans keep up with new shirt designs on the store's Facebook site. But he hasn't had much success pitching his shirts to local surf shops.

The recent "What the Deck" exhibition at the Steinbeck Center provided Classen with fresh inspiration as well as several new ideas to strengthen his business. Michael Osborne, the keynote speaker at the exhibition's Oct. 17 closing ceremony, uses his San Francisco-based design business to support charity-based nonprofit organizations. Osborne's speech prompted Classen to look into sources of seed funding for fledgling businesses with humanitarian goals.

As a high school student, Greg volunteered for The First Tee, an international mentoring program that uses golf to teach children positive life values. A chance connection with Last Mile Operations founder Matt George inspired Classen to offer his skills and enthusiasm to another cause. In addition to raising funds for the organization through T-shirt sales, Classen will join a team from Last Mile Operations on an aid mission to Indonesia this summer.

Classen said his experiences running his shirt business contributed to his recent decision to focus his studies in art.

"The biggest thing I learned from all this is that you have do what you love," Greg said.