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Southern Oregon Music Festival will go on Dancers mix it up to live jazz at KOBI's Studio C during a previous Southern Oregon Music Festival. [Mail Tribune / file photo] Thursday Mar 2, 2017 at 12:40 PM Mar 2, 2017 at 2:36 PM Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune After two weeks of calling, promoting and nearly resorting to passing around an old hat for change, coordinators of the Southern Oregon Music Festival announced Wednesday that the show will, most certainly, go on. The festival launched a fundraising campaign in early February after the loss of three key sponsors, who contributed a combined $50,000 annually, threatened to shutter the event for good. Dennis Ramsden, festival board president and executive director, said that enough pledges had been secured by Wednesday to meet the festival's $50,000 goal. Ramsden said continued efforts to find sponsors and help from new board members should ensure financial stability for the festival. About half the festival's $200,000 annual budget comes from donors, the rest from admission passes sold for the three-day event. Ramsden said pledges to help save the festival came from across the West Coast in increments ranging up to $1,000. "We received enough in the way of sponsorships that we feel we're in a position to continue the festival," Ramsden said. "This gives us seven months to continue to build our sponsorships and we have lots of new board members who will help raise money in the off-season, in ways we never have before, so we're feeling pretty good about it." The festival began downtown in 1989 as the "Dixieland Jubilee" and became the Medford Jazz Festival from 2009 to 2014 before it was renamed the Southern Oregon Music Festival. In addition to the annual event, the festival organization provides music education to youth, from private lessons and programs in area schools to more than 200 instruments to young musicians. Eli Matthews, senior vice president of Travel Medford, said loss of the festival would have been devastating to the region. "We are absolutely thrilled that they were able to pull the community and donors together," Matthews said. "This is something that Travel Medford has been involved with since the beginning. It's an event that shines our light out, not only locally but across the entire West Coast. "This is an event that brings people who aren't local to the area for multiple days to attend and they stay in our hotels, eat at our restaurants and explore our area. In terms of promoting our area, it's one of our signature events that has really brought a lot of people to our area." Ramsden said he was motivated by his new board of directors and the support his pledge drive received from festival fans. "People will travel for this type of event. I was a supporter of Shakespeare. I came every two weeks from San Fran and I got tired of driving, so I moved here," he said. "None of these things survive on ticket sales. Donations are crucial, so we have to really diversify the way we get our funding and I think we're well on our way." This year's festival is slated to run Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 and is expected to include five venues, up to 17 bands and over 90 performances. For more information, visit somusicfest.org.  Reach Medford freelance writer Buffy Pollock at [email protected].