Kickstarter Hits $1 Billion In Pledges

Kickstarter, the popular crowdfunding service that helps people raise money to support creative projects, announced Monday it has surpassed $1 billion in pledges since it was founded in 2009.

More than half of that amount was pledged in the last 12 months, an indication of just how rapid the pace of Kickstarter’s growth has been. Perhaps due to its rate of growth, Kickstarter was recently targeted by hackers, who stole passwords, mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of its users, though not credit card numbers.

In all, more than 5.7 million people from 224 countries have donated to support Kickstarter projects. Returning backers—people who have already supported at least one project—alone donated $619 million to Kickstarter projects. According to Kickstarter, the most lucrative day of the week for fundraising is Wednesday, and the most lucrative day in its history was March 13, 2013.