2025 tested creators everywhere. Economic uncertainty as well as rising manufacturing and shipping costs made launching and fulfilling a crowdfunding campaign harder than ever.
Still, creators pushed forward, collaborated, and found opportunity in the fray. And on BackerKit, many launched their biggest, boldest projects yet.
That momentum carried across the entire platform and helped produce some of the biggest moments and milestones at BackerKit that shaped the year.
BackerKit’s Biggest Moments & Milestones of 2025
- We hosted record-breaking creators, campaigns, and category growth. Topping lists and setting trends across Films, Plushies, Graphic Novels, TTRPGs, and more.
- We saw the exponential growth of BackerKit Collab-Funding. Collab-Funding campaigns grew 3x and Collab-Funding pledge-volume grew 7x year-over-year. Plus, we achieved 100% funding for all 2025 Topia projects.
- We shipped impactful tools built for the crowdfunding pro. BackerKit Tariff Manager, Pre-Launch Reservation, Audience Intelligence, Patreon Integration, and so much more.
- We raised $3M+ through our Wefunder campaign thanks to you, our community of creators and backers. Thousands of investors backed us and our vision for the future of crowdfunding built for the creative pro.
- We even hit new milestones behind the scenes at BackerKit. Our people and platform are setting new industry standards for crowdfunding success.
Record-breaking creators, campaigns, and category growth
Chart-Topping Creators Who Had Their Biggest Campaigns Ever
🎬 Nail House by RocketJump became the #1 Most-funded Crowdfunded Film of 2025 and #1 Most-funded Crowdfunded Action Film of all time, raising over $1 million from over 10,000 backers
🐉 Weighted Wonders – Weighted & Warmable Dragon Plush by Roamin’ Bison Workshop became the #1 Most-funded Crowdfunded Plushie campaign across all platforms, raising over $1.2 million from over 8,000 backers
🐊 The Dungeon Crawler Carl: Crocodile Graphic Novel by Vault Comics is now the #4 Most-funded crowdfunding Graphic Novel of all time.
Category Growth: TTRPG Spotlight
2025 turned out to be the biggest year yet for TTRPGs on BackerKit.
- 5e and Indie TTRPGs are thriving on BackerKit: We found that BackerKit TTRPG creators are raising 2x more funds on average compared to other platforms. Yes, double.
- 3 of the Top 10 Crowdfunded TTRPGs of 2025 launched on BackerKit, and each were $1M+ projects: Monte Cook’s Cypher and Magnus Archives, and World’s Largest Dungeon by World’s Largest RPGs.
- TTRPGs are moving to BackerKit. Our RPG projects grew 12x in 3 years, and 50% of our RPG creators launched their best project on BackerKit – like Action Fiction’s $260K 5e TTRPG Monsters of Murka Trilogy that raised 3x more than their last. Sign up for the webinar here >>
- TTRPG Collab-Funding took off: Our collaborative crowdfunding model is growing fast and TTRPG creators are leading the way like Mothership Month and Mausritter Month, both high-funding events building fandom on BackerKit.
Learn how BackerKit helps creators level up their TTRPG.
New Collab-Funding Event – Unlocked: BackerKit Holiday Market
🎁 The first-ever BackerKit Holiday Market moved nearly $800,000 from over 10,000 shoppers to indie creators, helping creators secure some extra end-of-year funding.
The Exponential Growth of BackerKit Collab-Funding
Collaboration was a defining theme of 2025.
In 2023, we had just one Collab-Funding event: Pintopia – the pioneering Topia that launched this new way of crowdfunding.
Over just 2 short years, we’ve helped host 30+ Collab-Funding events – both Topias and Group-Collabs – in which over 200,000 backers have participated.
In 2025 alone, we grew Collab-Funding by 64% year over year and achieved 100% funding for all Topia projects which collectively raised over $4M.
Creators who participate in a Topia are not only more likely to fund, but they are also more likely to launch their best projects on BackerKit. We found that of our Topia creators:
- 33% had their best project ever through Topia 2025
- 58% had their best project ever on BackerKit
- 50% of Pintopia 2025 projects have already launched another project
What’s next?
- Pintopia 2026 – Poised to be our biggest Topia yet! 200+ enamel pin, plushie, and ita bag projects launching next week on Jan 22nd. Don’t miss out – follow the Topia page for updates.
- Zinetopia 2026 – BackerKit’s small-format TTRPG crowdfunding Group-Collab event celebrating Zine Month running February 2–27, 2026.
See all our past, current, and future Collab-Funding events here, and learn more about Collab-Funding here.
BackerKit has always focused on delivering powerful, practical tools built in close collaboration with creators. Since 2012, when it was just Maxwell and I as founders, our team has worked side-by-side with creators to build a crowdfunding platform that evolves with their needs.
Here’s what we shipped together in 2025:
Tariff Manager
When tariffs and global costs spiked in April, creators needed clarity—fast. We responded by launching BackerKit Tariff Manager.
Available for both BackerKit Crowdfunding and Pledge Manager, this feature lets creators clearly communicate tariff fees and apply them as a separate checkout line item. It was built with direct input from 500+ creators who responded to our Tariff Survey, ensuring immediate, real-world impact.
Pre-Launch Reservation
Bigger launches lead to bigger campaigns. In summer 2025, we introduced BackerKit Pre-Launch Reservation—a new way to activate high-intent fans before launch day.
Early results:
- $210K+ collected in pre-launch reservation revenue
- 80% conversion rate from reservations to pledges
- Nearly $2M in pledge revenue from reservers
Creators saw:
- Higher-quality, high-intent backers
- Stronger Day 1 momentum and social proof
- More predictable launches
- Less wasted spend on low-intent leads
Creators who paired reservations with clear incentives and enough pre-launch runway saw the strongest results. To further enhance your campaign, we have also released several new features, which you can explore here.
Audience Intelligence
Before you can rally your fans, you need to understand them.
BackerKit Audience Intelligence gives creators x-ray vision into their campaign’s engagement journey—tracking how visitors become followers, and followers become backers.
Creators can:
- Identify conversion drop-offs and friction points
- Optimize actions at each stage of the funnel
- Track audience growth across campaigns
- See their fan growth compound over time
For further updates on new BackerKit features designed to help you grow and activate your audience, including the crowdfunding calculator and simplified shipping, you can learn more here.
Patreon Integration
In 2025, we launched our BackerKit Patreon Integration, the first Patreon-to-crowdfunding integration of its kind.
Patreon creators can now seamlessly turn their existing audience into crowdfunding backers with exclusive rewards and targeted pledge levels—making crowdfunding faster, easier, and more effective.
This integration helped Freddie Wong (Co-founder of RocketJump and Dungeons & Daddies)—the #7 Patreon Podcast Creator—power his campaign past $1M, making it the most-funded crowdfunded film of 2025 and #1 most-funded crowdfunded action film of all time.
Raised $3M+ to Fund the Future of Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding isn’t what it used to be—and we believe it can be better.
That belief is why we built a pledge manager in the first place. It’s why we built a crowdfunding platform. And it’s why, in 2025, we crowdfunded BackerKit itself.
In our vision, crowdfunding is how and where creators can:
- Build fandoms
- Collaborate with other creators
- Go pro, stay pro, and keep growing
We are excited to continue this journey alongside our community. Our team is grateful for the support of over 4,000 investors—many of whom are creators and backers within our community—who share our vision that crowdfunding needs to evolve and trust us to lead that change.
BackerKit Milestones Behind the Scenes
Our people and our platform are setting the industry benchmarks for creator success and customer satisfaction. Here’s a peek behind the curtain:
- Our Performance Marketing team manages crowdfunding ads for creators and in 2025 helped raise over $20M in funds across some of the biggest crowdfunding campaigns of the year.
- BackerKit Trust & Safety reviewed 1,300 projects, with BackerKit leading the industry with a 99.79% fulfillment success rate—best in the industry.
- Our Success & Support team handled 47,000+ backer tickets with a 94%+ happiness score, helping creators take another load off their plates.
- BackerKit Pledge Manager Pro helped fulfill 3,300 projects and shipped 1.4M+ packages.
Experience BackerKit today. Sign up for a free creator account and join the many creators who are making the switch and hitting record success on BackerKit.
Looking Ahead Into 2026
2026 is already shaping up to be even bigger. Keep a look out for our biggest Pintopia launching next week and Zinetopia launching in February. We’re also excited for Dragonsteel’s new launch Hoid’s Storybook collection by Brandon Sanderson, more creator lead Collab-Funding projects up ahead Mega Dungeon Month, Old-School Essentials, and so much more!
And join us on Feb 4th to talk shop about 2026 Crowdfunding Strategies That Work: How Action Fiction Tripled Funding. Our expert panel will share the strategy moves and pivots behind their wildly successful Monsters of Murka Trilogy, Action Fiction’s highest funded campaign to date that raised 3x more than their last.
Thank you to every creator and backer who made 2025 what it was. Here’s to building the future of crowdfunding—together. Happy New Year ✨
— Rosanna & Maxwell
P.S. 2026 applications are open for Pocketopia and Printopia. Sign up even if you’re interested but don’t have a project thought out—we’d love to hear what you have cooking up!
P.P.S. We have more updates to come, so don’t forget to subscribe to our Community Newsletter and follow us on Bluesky, Instagram and Linkedin.