Festival patrons kick in $1M-plus Admission-free status in future uncertain

BANGOR – Organizers of last weekend’s American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront announced Wednesday that the fundraising effort to cover the cost for the annual three-day spree of traditional music, dance, crafts and food has exceeded the $1 million mark.

“We paid for this year’s festival,” Heather McCarthy, the festival’s executive director, said Wednesday.

“The budgeted expenses for our anticipated costs come out to about $980,000,” she said.

This year’s fundraising target, however, was $1.03 million, a figure that includes additional money aimed at reducing by 20 percent debt incurred during past festivals, McCarthy said.

“As of today, we haven’t hit the $1.03 million mark, but I don’t think we’re done [counting revenues] yet,” she said. “We’re still receiving gifts” thanks in part to a mail-in donation card attached to this year’s festival programs.

The cards, which also were collected during the festival, also serve as entries for a chance to win a framed 2007 festival poster signed by this year’s festival performers. Entries must be postmarked by Friday in order to be eligible for the contest.

Whether that means the festival will continue to be admission-free remained unclear this week.

McCarthy said that likely will be discussed next week during a festival board of directors meeting. She said that while a decision might not be made that soon, “we’re going into that discussion with a very good feeling. Certainly, it feels like we made a giant leap this year.”

The festival relies heavily upon contributions from a variety of sources, including government, corporate, foundation and individual donors to provide the approximately $1 million needed to present the annual event free-of-charge.

Past years’ fundraising efforts have fallen slightly short of this goal, and organizers this year put extra effort into raising public awareness of the fundraising need.

That message was heard by festival fans, as evidenced by the thousands of individual and corporate donations made in recent days.

Hundreds of people mailed donations to the festival headquarters and thousands of festival-goers “kicked in” to the bucket brigade during the three-day event.

The bucket brigade total reached $94,779 – a dramatic increase over the $61,000 raised in 2006 and this year’s $75,000 goal.

“This was a huge team effort,” Mary Brann, the festival’s development director, said.

“Between the board of directors, the development committee and the volunteers on-site, our team did an amazing job of crafting our message, getting that message out to the public and providing a way for them to respond,” she said.

For more information about the festival, visit www.americanfolkfestival.com, visit the festival’s headquarters at 40 Harlow St. in Bangor or call 992-2630.