Directory permissions issue

I apologize if this has already been asked, but I’m having difficulty using the search here, so I didn’t find it.

I’m on a shared server, and environment where having directories with permissions set to 0777 is a really bad idea. Piwik doesn’t function if tmp isn’t set in that manner, though (and I tried 775, just in case; no dice). Is there a workaround for this?

I really want there to be; I’m trying to talk this up at work as an alternative to google-analytics, but even though there we control our own servers, that little world-writable bit is going to raise a few eyebrows.