Crowdfunding raised 223 million euros in the Netherlands last year

Crowdfunding, crowd financing, and crowd investing in the Netherlands showed strong growth of 31 percent last year compared to 2016 figures when 170 million euros was raised. A total of 223 million euros was raised through Dutch crowd initiatives last year, which financed over 5,300 separate actions, according to an analysis from CrowdfundingCijfers.nl

Initiatives related to sustainability and green energy typically out performed other projects. More non-profit organizations also turned to crowd actions as individual contributions are harder to come by, the analysis stated. Real estate projects also took more of a foothold with investors becoming more confident in long-term loans as the post-crisis economic recovery firmly continued.

Successful business projects raised an average of 102 thousand euros, to combine for 192.7 million euros in funding. Creative arts projects raised 15 thousand euros on average for 14.4 million euros in total. Social projects which collected money for playgrounds and school initiatives, among other issues, received 13.1 million euros. This was an average of six thousand euros per project.

Meanwhile, crowd-backed loans to support home renovations and vehicle purchases averaged 7,500 euros, collecting 2.8 million euros in total.

The strong growth of 2017 is slightly less than the 33 percent increase of 2016. The crowdfunding market doubled every other preceding year beginning in 2013. The analysis used many forms of raising capital from a swarm of people, including convertible loan and share-in-ownership crowd investing, standard loan crowd financing, and the typical crowdfunding of gifting money sometimes in exchange for rewards and pre-purchases of goods.