NORTHAMPTON — Fans of the Northampton Jazz Festival won’t be getting their fix next month, according to organizers.

Steven Campbell, president of the festival’s board of directors, told the Gazette that lack of sponsorship and staffing issues make a murky future for the downtown music event.

“It’s hard when we can’t get some of the big companies in our own town to support us,” Campbell said. “It’s hard when there’s only a small group of us doing all these things.”

Campbell said the annual festival, which began in 2011, takes about eight months of work and $50,000 to put on. It drew headliners such as Freddie Bryant, Charles Neville and Matt Wilson to the Armory Street mainstage.

“The folks who have supported us we’re very, very thankful for,” he said, mentioning TD Bank and Baystate Health. “But you can only knock on the same door so many times.”

Campbell said he hopes to keep the free festival intact, though organizers may need to change the model, “and make it conducive to a larger audience than just a jazz audience.”

“With any luck we can drum up more support to potentially create a 2017 festival,” he said, inviting anyone interested in volunteering or sponsoring to email the board through its website.

The lack of financial backing, he said, seems to stem from a changing dynamic among local businesses, which increasingly reserve charitable donations for philanthropic purposes and not artistic ones.

“We had to start looking outside of our region,” he said.

One of the festival’s founders, Rick Gifford, said that’s when he knew the festival was failing in its mission.

“I jumped out when they started seeking sponsorships from breweries in California,” said Gifford, who said he helped start the festival as a way of bringing the Northampton community together using Northampton dollars.

Gifford, who also started organizing the event to draw more young musicians into downtown, said he’d happily get involved again as long as proceedings retained the all-local, community-fueled focus.

“If Northampton isn’t about music and eating and local, then what the hell is it?” said Gifford. “It’s got to be about those things.”

Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.