Crowd-funding site Kickstarter hits $1 billion in pledges

NEW YORK, March 3 (UPI) -- Kickstarter, the crowd-funding site that has funded everything from smart watch manufacturer Pebble to the new Veronica Mars movie, passed $1 billion in pledges Sunday.

More than half of these pledges have come in the last 12 months from more than 5.7 million pledgers, suggesting the crowd-funding is running strong and here to stay. The crowd-funding site has successfully funded projects like a children's book and the award-winning documentary The Square, the Netflix original about the Cairo protests, which lost out at the Oscar's Sunday night.

The company has put out interactive graphics and charts to list which countries these 5.7 million pledgers come from and which country leads in donations. The U.S. led the way with more than half of the donations, totaling $663 million, followed by the U.K. and Canada, who raised more than $54 million and $44 million, respectively.

While many of the donations were from first-time donors, a bulk of the donations came from repeat donors and Kickstarter profiles a few of their "influential donors."

The company also provided trends they observed over the last four years. For example, they found that 18 of their "backers," what the sites calls their donors, were named "mom," 17 were called "Grandma," with only 5 backers called "Grandpa." The company's best day in terms of total pledges was March 13, when over $4 million was pledged to 1,985 projects.

[Kickstarter] [NBCNews]