BANGOR – There’s no such thing as a free lunch – or a free Folk Festival, according to organizers of the national traditional arts concert.

Attendees of the waterfront festival are admitted free of charge, but corporations, local businesses and the city for three years have helped foot the festival’s roughly $1 million annual bill.

This year, $100,000 remains to be raised for the National Folk Festival, slated for Aug. 27-29, according to Michael Crowley, chairman of the Bangor festival and vice president of Eastern Maine Charities.

“Everyone understands that it’s free. The dilemma, or the challenge, we have is I’m not sure that everyone understands that it costs money,” Crowley said Monday. “We’re challenged to raise funds locally.”

Crowley, festival executive committee member John Rohman and festival coordinator Heather McCarthy were interviewed Monday at the Bangor Daily News.

While overall fund raising is on track, Crowley said, individual donations for this year are down more than $67,000 from 2002, the festival’s first time in Bangor. Organizers are looking to national corporations and grants to fund this year’s festival, as well as the Bangor-based American Folk Festival in 2005, Crowley said.

“The largest percentage of sponsored support needs to come from away” in the form of corporate sponsorships and grants, he said.

The American Folk Festival, scheduled for Aug. 26-28, 2005, will be similar in scope and cost to the national festival, which is produced by the National Council for the Traditional Arts.

In a scaled-back role, the NCTA will supply the same high-caliber national performers for the American Folk Festival, while eventually passing on most production responsibilities to local organizers, McCarthy said.

The NCTA doesn’t contribute funding to the festival. The expertise, staff and time offered by the NCTA is valued at $80,000 to $90,000 annually, which the local festival pays, McCarthy said. The association’s involvement with the American Folk Festival has not been determined, she said. The amount of donations that organizers can count on from local businesses remains to be seen, as well.

Business owners who pledged annual donations during the national festival’s three-year run in Bangor may look at other options for 2005, said Rohman, a former festival chairman.

“We’ve convinced ourselves that we’ve beat on the local firms,” he said Monday.

Since 2002, local businesses have accounted for nearly half of the festival’s annual funding.

Some business owners have decreased or eliminated their donations this year, a trend that could drain funding from the American Folk Festival, Crowley said.

“The opportunities [for donation] are finite,” he said. “[The festival] has to be of not just local importance.”

Future fund-raising efforts also will target individual contributors, allowing even $25 donors a sense of partnership in the festival, McCarthy said.

“The more that people have ownership … the more they’re going to want to see the fruits of their labor,” she said.

The city of Bangor has pledged $75,000 for the 2005 festival, up $25,000 from this year’s donation to the 66th National Folk Festival, Crowley said.

Festival attendees remain the exception to the festival’s fund-raising rule. Admission will continue to be free for practical and philosophical reasons, McCarthy said.

“[Charging admission] is worse than a logistical nightmare. It just seems so impossible” to collect a fee from thousands of people at festival gates, she said.

Last summer, more than 100,000 people attended the festival in Bangor, compared to 80,000 in 2002.

Lowell, Mass., with a population of 105,000, is now home to the largest folk festival in the country after hosting the national event in the 1980s. Its free three-day festival draws about 200,000 people each year.

East Lansing, Mich., now hosts the Great Lakes Festival at no charge to attendees, while Dayton, Ohio, revived its festival last year and charged admission, McCarthy said.

Providing music from 17 countries and all 50 states for free to an underserved audience is a critical mission of the festival, philosophically and financially, McCarthy said. Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and other organizations, which have sponsored the three-year event, are dependent on the festival remaining free, she said.

Ultimately, organizers hope to establish a free traditional arts festival in Bangor for years to come, McCarthy said.

“We’re working very hard to make that ideal a reality,” she said.