BANGOR – With a week to go before the kickoff of the American Folk Festival, organizers said Friday they have reached 78 percent of their $1 million fundraising goal.

Each year, it takes a little more than $1 million and about 800 volunteers to put on the three-day festival of music, dance and crafts on the Bangor Waterfront.

As of Friday, organizers were $222,095 shy of their $1,031,000 budget for this year’s festival set for Aug. 24-26, Executive Director Heather McCarthy said Friday.

Money needed to close the budget gap will have to be raised through donations to the bucket brigade, a group of volunteers who roam the festival with buckets for contributions.

Other revenue options: T-shirt sales, parking fees and contributions from individuals and small businesses, she said.

As festival weekend draws near, organizers are hoping some new fundraising will help bridge the gap.

“I wouldn’t say [festival donations] have grown by leaps and bounds, but we’ve had some success with a mailing we sent to people in Bangor and Brewer,” McCarthy said.

The portion of the operating budget organizers planned to seek from individuals was set at $43,000, up $5,000 from what was raised last year, she said.

But because of the mail outreach, donations from individual donors, who contributed an average of about $25 each, now stand at $51,000.

“That’s fantastic,” she said. “I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to hope that most people would think festival weekend is worth $25,” she said.

Bangor and Brewer were starting points, McCarthy said. That was as far as the mailings could go this year due to limited resources. She hopes to expand to other communities in the future.

Also running slightly ahead is assistance from grants and foundations, she said.

The festival board hoped to raise at least $100,000 from that sector. On Friday, $104,000 had come in under that heading, McCarthy said.

Despite the increase in individual, grant and foundation dollars, the amount organizers hoped to obtain from government sources is lagging, in part because the state hasn’t yet determined how much, if any, it will contribute.

In past years, the state has kicked in as much as $20,000, according to McCarthy.

To date, festival planners have raised $141,000 of the $175,000 they planned to obtain from government sources overall.

Local governments, however, have been a bright spot.

When fundraising for the festival began last year, the cities of Bangor and Brewer already were on board, McCarthy said. This year, the nearby towns of Hermon, Veazie and Milford stepped forward for the first time.

Slightly behind in its support is the corporate sector, McCarthy said.

The festival’s funding goal from corporations is $470,000. To date, $452,250 has poured in, a total that is 5 percent under projections.

Much of the remaining deficit will have to be raised during the festival itself in the form of earnings, including sales of ice and compact discs, booth rentals and other goods and services, McCarthy noted. The goal in that regard is $238,000.

“We are going to have a big hill to climb over festival weekend, but we’re hoping the work we’ve been doing over the past years will convince people to support us,” she said.

“The target for the bucket brigade is $75,000, but honestly, I’m hoping we can overshoot that,” McCarthy said.

After hearing from patrons who never got an opportunity to put money into one of the money buckets carried by members of the festival’s bucket brigade, organizers last year added two “super buckets.”

“People are moving around all the time [on the festival grounds],” McCarthy said. “With 40 volunteers working a crowd of 80,000, you’re going to miss some,” she said.

To that end, the super buckets – two 55-gallon drums decked out to look like the five-gallon plastic pails carried by members of the bucket brigade – were set out near the shuttle bus stops near the Railroad and Heritage stages.

They’ll be located at those sites again next weekend.

“The placement of those turned out to be very key in our fundraising effort,” she said.

This year, the board is adding another new element – the “mega bucket,” McCarthy said.

Donors, however, won’t be able to put dollars and spare change in it, she said.

Rather, the giant canvas display that will be erected near the Railroad Stage will allow fundraisers to plot how much has been raised during the festival in much the same way as do the large thermometers used by other nonprofits.

“People really like to see progress,” she said.

McCarthy hopes the funding barometer will get festival goers excited about reaching the goal, which is one way they can help keep the festival free for future years.

Information about the festival may be found at the festival’s Web site at www.americanfolkfestival.com.