The concept of offering a few bucks to help out a project might have started to help your friend’s new album, but new numbers show it’s growing rapidly–and turning into a legitimate form of investment.
Crowdfunding is booming. More than 1 million campaigns across 308 platforms raised $2.7 billion last year, an increase of 81% on 2011. And that volume is set to almost double in 2013, to $5.1 billion, according to a new report.
But, if you thought the future of crowdfunding was all about dinky video game pitches, and cheerful perks on Kickstarter, you’d be missing something. Going forward, crowdfunding is likely to take on many forms, be more geographically-diverse, and, for better and worse, look more like big-time investing.
Massolution, which specializes in crowdfunding research, says volumes in North America grew 105% last year, to $1.6 billion, and in Europe by 65%, to $945 million. And that together, the two regions account for 95% of all transactions. Overall, 85% of that volume was straight donations, or donations in return for perks (the Kickstarter model).
