The Tacoma Tall Ships Organization is considering several ways to pay off its $500,000 deficit from last month’s festival and is also looking for ideas, festival co-chairwoman Clare Petrich said Saturday.

“We are open to every idea from the community on how to raise these funds,” she said. “The ideas we have now are kind of the typical fundraising.”

Such ideas include selling the leftover merchandise from last month’s festival, initiating a membership drive and looking for an “angel” donor who would contribute a large sum or put up matching funds. In an e-mail sent to supporters Friday, organizers ask for cash donations.

The event, which ran July 3-7 along the Thea Foss Waterway, attracted about 300,000 people, a much lower number than expected. Organizers said last week that it ran at a $500,000 deficit because of several factors.

“Poor weather, a faltering economy and low ticket sales impacted us, and we are investigating what we do differently next time,” the e-mail read.

Despite the financial blow, organizers aren’t ruling out hosting a future festival.

In a separate e-mail to supporters, the board said it’s committed to both paying the debt and focusing on the return of the ships, likely in 2011.

“There’s been a lot of enthusiastic talk and true belief that Tall Ships is an event that this community wants to have,” Petrich said. “But we can’t go ahead until we pay off the deficit for 2008. We have to do that first.”

Tall Ships will operate a booth to sell merchandise at reduced prices at the Maritime Fest on Tacoma’s waterfront Sept. 13-14.

The organization wants to pay off its creditors as soon as possible, Petrich said, and it has ample time before fundraising for any future festival would begin. The Tall Ships circuit typically alternates among the Atlantic, the Great Lakes and the Pacific every three years. Tall Ships Tacoma began seeking sponsors about 18 months before the start of this year’s event.

Meanwhile, in their e-mail, organizers highlighted the positives that came from the festival, including:

 • The Youth on Board program, in which 47 teenagers from Western Washington sailed aboard one of three tall ships from Victoria, B.C., to Tacoma. Five of those participants were also selected to sail from Los Angeles to San Diego aboard the U.S. Coast Guard barque Eagle earlier this month.

 • An afternoon cruise for 30 special-needs youths.

 • The positive response from the Tall Ships community.

And the board doesn’t want news of the debt to ruin the legacy of this year’s event.

“In our minds, the festival was a success because of the overwhelming community support it received, the positive reception the crews received, and the hundreds of thousands of visitors who attended and had a great time,” one of the e-mails read. “We provided an extraordinary event for hundreds of thousands of people.”

HOW TO HELP

In an e-mail to supporters, Tall Ships Tacoma organizers suggest supporters can take these measures to help erase the group’s half-million-dollar deficit:

 • Send a tax-deductible donation to:

Tacoma Tall Ships Organization

Suite 1

1118 E. D St.

Tacoma, WA 98421

 • Buy leftover Tall Ships merchandise at reduced prices at the group’s booth at the Maritime Fest, Sept. 13 and 14 along the Thea Foss Waterway.

 • Volunteer to help with the Maritime Fest booth or in another capacity.