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# Kickstarter Raised $274M Last Year
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/kickstarter-raised-274m-last-year/
- Published: 2013-01-09T00:55:28.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:35:52.000Z
- Description: Here and there in recent months, there have been grumblings about Kickstarter burnout. There have also been Kickstarter indecision crises — how do you know when to pledge, and how much? — and Kickstarter skepticism. But to all the naysayers, nonbelievers, and doubters, Kickstarter might now present
- Author: Jillian Steinhauer
- Tags: Opinion, Funding, Kickstarter, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

![A breakdown of 2012 Kickstarters by category (image via Kickstarter)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/01/kickstarter-categories.jpg)

A breakdown of 2012 Kickstarters by category (screenshot via Kickstarter)

Here and there in recent months, there have been grumblings about [Kickstarter burnout](https://hyperallergic.com/the-dangers-of-crowd-funding-art/). There have also been [Kickstarter indecision crises](http://thebillfold.com/2012/05/when-should-you-give-money-to-support-your-friends-pursuits/?ref=hyperallergic.com) — how do you know when to pledge, and how much? — and [Kickstarter skepticism](https://hyperallergic.com/1-million-for-water-tank-art/). But to all the naysayers, nonbelievers, and doubters, Kickstarter might now present this: [stats from 2012](http://www.kickstarter.com/year/2012?ref=hyperallergic.com), which show that **the crowd-funding platform raised an impressive $274.4 million last year**. And that’s just the money collected — some $319.8 million was pledged, which I feel compelled to point out is more than double the [fiscal year 2012 budget](https://hyperallergic.com/kickstarter-nea/) of the National Endowment of the Arts ($146 million).

![two-kickstarter-art-projects-worth-a-look](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/01/two-kickstarter-art-projects-worth-a-look.gif)

That money came from 2.2 million people around the globe (there were backers in 90% of the world’s countries) and successfully funded 18,109 projects. Amazingly, Kickstarter estimates that backers pledged roughly $600 *per minute* over the course of the year. Per minute! If I had $600 to spend per minute … well, anyway.

As with the last time we [checked in on Kickstarter stats](https://hyperallergic.com/kickstarter-stats-infographics/), art was the fourth most popular category, with nearly 3,783 projects launched and just under half of them funded. The three categories ahead of it were publishing, music, and film & video, although Kickstarter separates photography from art and comics from publishing, so the distinctions seem a bit arbitrary. Some $10.5 million was pledged to art projects over the year, but frustratingly (and self-servingly), Kickstarter doesn’t say how much of that actually went through. It is interesting to note that the category with the most promised money was games, with a whopping $83 million, even though games falls below art in terms of the number of projects launched. I guess that means games are, on average, more expensive.

Overall, the stats aren’t as in-depth or revealing as we’d like them to be — as mentioned above, there are no category breakdowns of actual money raised, and there’s no information about success versus failure rates or any clues as to what makes for a successful project. But the numbers are definitely interesting and at times staggering: consider that the amount of money pledged rose 221% from 2011, and money collected rose 238%.

The takeaway? Some of us may be experiencing Kickstarter burnout, but we should probably deal with it, because crowd-sourced funding is quite obviously here to stay.