Taiwanese crowdfunding campaigns raised more than NT$2.5 billion (US$87.78 million) last year, with one effort taking in NT$124 million, according to the crowdfunding tracking Web site Backtail.
The number of individual donations also grew significantly to more than 1 million, rising from 660,000 in 2019, Backtail data showed.
The biggest crowdfunding was for a proposed historical film trilogy by Taiwanese director Wei Te-sheng (魏德聖), which raised NT$124 million from 23,956 individual donations, the Web site showed.
The films, with the first one expected to be released in 2024, is to feature Taiwan’s early history from the perspective of Aboriginal Siraya hunters and gatherers, Chinese pirates and Dutch missionaries.
Wei is the widely acclaimed screenwriter and director of Cape No. 7 (海角七號), Kano and Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (賽德克:巴萊).
The other nine were all related to group buying, a business model in which companies offer their products at significantly reduced prices on the condition that a minimum number of people commit to purchasing them.
In the second-highest grossing campaign, 2,724 people pledged NT$53.14 million to buy the Ecovacs robot vacuum model, according to the Web site.
Backtail’s review also drew attention to a crowdfunded “Taiwan Can Help” advertisement, which was published in the New York Times in April to protest Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO and to offer global assistance amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
That campaign received 26,980 donations in less than one day — the second-highest number for any Taiwanese crowdfunding last year — and raised a total of NT$19.13 million, the Web site showed.
In total, the 1,500 crowdfunding campaigns in Taiwan brought in more than NT$2.5 billion last year, compared with about 900 campaigns and NT$1.7 billion in funds the previous year, the data showed.
Backtail’s statistics included information from the local crowdfunding platforms zeczec (嘖嘖), Flying V and BackMe, as well as the international sites Indiegogo, Wadiz, Makuake, Campfire, Readyfor and Green Funding, but omitted other major sites such as Kickstarter.
Backtail is owned by the Taipei-based crowdfunding marketing agency Backer-Founder (貝殼放大).
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