BANGOR – With less than a week to go before the National Folk Festival, organizers are trying to raise the remaining $100,000 needed to pull off the three-day event.

“The need is there. It’s a similar situation to where we’ve been in previous years,” said John Rohman, a festival executive committee member, on Friday.

In the festival’s two previous years in Bangor, the fund-raising gap closed during the two weeks prior to the event and the week after, Rohman said.

Calling the festival a “free” event may have drawn attention away from the roughly $1 million it costs to produce, festival coordinator Heather McCarthy said Friday.

“I think we might have done too good a job telling people it was free,” she said.

This year’s expenses total $1,084,964, which is approximately $113,000 more than last year, though McCarthy said she expects to come in under budget in several areas.

Fund raising will continue after the festival if the $100,000 mark hasn’t been reached, McCarthy said.

Despite the fund-raising gap, this year’s festival, to be held Aug. 27-29 on the Bangor waterfront, could be the most financially successful of all three years, according to Michael Crowley, chairman of the Bangor festival and vice president of Eastern Maine Charities.

The 66th National Folk Festival will break even provided that giving during the festival is generous, individual contributions increase, and all pledges to donate are honored, Crowley said Friday.

“We feel very comfortable that our pledges are very solid and will be made,” he said. “People have asked us, ‘How can we help?'”

The majority of festival pledges, which began as three-year donation agreements in 2002, are held by local businesses, McCarthy said.

The army of 100 or so “bucket heads,” made up of volunteers who collect donations in plastic pails on festival grounds, will again play a vital role in fund raising, McCarthy said.

“The Bucket Heads are so enthusiastic about their volunteer job,” McCarthy said Friday. “It’s such a great team of people.”

The group collected a combined $62,000 from festival-goers during the previous two years of the festival, she said.

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

Fund raising this year is focused on national corporations, individual donors and, increasingly, on grant foundations, Rohman said.

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

But local merchants, including his own WBRC Architects, already are swamped with funding requests from a variety of organizations, Rohman said. “We get asked an awful lot,” said the chief executive officer of WBRC. “It’s very, very strong and it really doesn’t let up.”

That’s part of why individuals are being asked to pick up some of the burden through a New Friends fund-raising campaign, which includes mass mailings and private parties, Crowley said.

“We hope to raise a minimum of $50,000 through our New Friends effort,” he said.

Individual donations for this year are down more than $67,000 from 2002, the first year the festival was in Bangor, according to a July 9 festival revenue report.

The city of Bangor and the state Office of Tourism each have pledged $50,000 to the festival. The National Council for the Traditional Arts, which produces the event, does not provide funding.

The local festival pays the council approximately $80,000 to $90,000 annually for its expertise, staff and time.

“There are no federal dollars that come with the National Folk Festival title,” Crowley said.

The strong local support exhibited during the festival’s first two years leaves him cautiously optimistic that the $100,000 will be raised, Crowley said.

“We’re all looking at the same crystal ball,” he said.