This week shows exactly where crowdfunding sits going into 2026: cooling but not crashing, platforms reinventing themselves, communities still backing brands they love, and scamsters circling the donation space like vultures.
1. Market pulse: November cools, but the pipes are still flowing
KingsCrowd’s November 2025 report paints a sober but not apocalyptic picture for U.S. investment crowdfunding.
Key numbers:
- Total raised: about $29.7M across Reg CF + Reg A+
- Reg CF: ≈ $21.3M from ~11,600 investors
- Reg A+: ≈ $8.4M across 22 active campaigns
- Down from $34M+ in both September and October, and from $30.8M in November last year
- Average cheque size dropped to around $1,800 per investor
Platform concentration remains intense:
Dealmaker, StartEngine, Wefunder and Republic took the lion’s share of activity, with DealMaker leading November at $6.3M, StartEngine ≈ $5.3M, Wefunder ≈ $4.5M, and Republic $3.1M+.
What this really means: The speculative froth is gone, but the core machine still works. Investors are writing smaller cheques, not walking away. The big portals continue to dominate deal flow and mindshare. If you’re a new platform or tiny issuer, you can’t coast on “the crowd will come” anymore; you need a real edge.
2. Indiegogo’s “Express Crowdfunding”: ship while you raise
On the rewards side, Indiegogo is trying to fix one of the industry’s biggest headaches: the black hole between backing and shipping.
They’ve announced “Express Crowdfunding”, a new campaign format that will let creators ship products while the campaign is still running, instead of waiting for it to end and then entering a pledge-manager phase.
What’s new:
- The current model (campaign → 2+ week admin lag → pledge manager → shipping) has been causing real friction; one recent example is Ayaneo’s retro handheld, whose shipments were delayed purely due to Indiegogo’s platform rules.
- Moving to Gamefound’s infrastructure (after the acquisition) is enabling Indiegogo to behave more like a “normal” e-commerce-adjacent platform where some inventory exists and shipping can start early.
For product creators, this is big: If you’ve already manufactured or partially manufactured, you will soon be able to treat crowdfunding more like a rolling pre-order channel rather than a binary “wait until we close” event.
For backers, it cuts one of the biggest friction points: “I pledged. Now I wait… forever?”
It now appears that Indiegogo is becoming nothing more than an ecommerce store. The initial intention of crowdfunding was to help project creators bring their ideas to life. Now all and sundry can use Indiegogo to sell already manufactured products.
3. Community rounds 3.0: Nothing and Stratiphy go back to the crowd
The community-round trend is very much alive:
- Consumer tech brand Nothing (phones, earbuds, that whole minimalist aesthetic) has launched “Community Investment 3” on Crowdcube, giving fans and early adopters another chance to buy equity alongside institutional investors.
- Wealthtech startup Stratiphy, a personalized investment/portfolio tool, has also launched its latest equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube to fuel product growth and customer acquisition.
Why this is important:
- These are not “we can’t raise anywhere else” companies; they’re using crowdfunding as deliberate community strategy as a bolt-on to venture, not replacement.
- It shows a maturing pattern: brand-led B2C companies + fintech’s are building multi-round community programs, not one-off stunts.
For founders: if you have a real user base, don’t treat “community round” as a novelty. Treat it as part of your long-term capital stack and brand strategy.
4. Mobility case study: Moby’s new round and a 429%+ investor uplift
In Ireland, e-bike sharing provider Moby has launched a fresh public crowdfunding campaign on Spark Crowdfunding as part of a €2M raise.
Spark’s own investor blog is (understandably) bragging:
- Spark investors first backed Moby in Dec 2020, at €0.24 per share, putting in just over €790k.
- In the latest round, Moby’s share price is €1.27, a 429% paper uplift since that original raise.
- For EIIS-eligible Irish investors (tax relief), Spark estimates the effective uplift at ≈780% when you factor in refunds.
Is every deal like this? Absolutely not. But:
- It’s a concrete example of equity crowdfunding generating real upside, not just “warm fuzzies” and swag.
- It also shows the power of follow-on rounds on the same platform, giving the crowd a chance to see their earlier bet repriced in a later raise.
For investors, this is your periodic reminder: the game is long-term and high-risk, but winners do exist, and sometimes they ride e-bikes.
5. Meta-question: is Reg CF still worth building a platform around?
On the infrastructure side, LenderKit just dropped a very frank piece: “Is Reg CF Still Worth Building a Crowdfunding Platform Around in 2025?”
Some highlights:
- By late 2025, data from KingsCrowd & Crowdfund Insider suggests 35 Reg CF-funded companies have failed while 19 have achieved exits. That’s startup reality, not apocalypse.
- Monthly Reg CF volume has cooled with~$35M in September, and November KingsCrowd data showing sub-$30M combined Reg CF + Reg A+.
- Big portals (Wefunder, StartEngine, Honeycomb, Republic) still dominate, with clear brand and scale advantages, and are diversifying into Reg A, secondary markets and institutional tie-ups.
The punchline:
“The Reg CF market isn’t collapsing; it’s maturing and consolidating. There’s still room for new platforms – but only if they’re niche, differentiated, and properly capitalized.”
If you’re thinking “let’s launch a generic Reg CF portal”, the answer in 2025 is basically: don’t. If you’re thinking “let’s launch a specialized, vertically focused, tech-enabled portal with a real distribution plan”, different story.
6. Scam season: regulators and fintech’s go on the offensive
It’s donation high-season globally, which unfortunately also means peak scam season for crowdfunding-style appeals.
A few separate threads are converging:
a) FTC: “Donate to charities, not scammers”
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission published a fresh consumer alert ahead of Giving Tuesday: “Donate to charities (not scammers) on Giving Tuesday.”
They hammer a few basics:
- Confirm the exact name of the charity and check it on independent ratings sites (BBB Wise Giving Alliance, CharityWatch, etc.).
- Watch out for names that sound like large charities but are slightly off.
- Be careful when you’re bounced from social media to crowdfunding pages, where funds usually go straight to the organizer with minimal oversight.
b) Coinbase: holiday charity scam guidance
Coinbase added its own warning, breaking down holiday charity scams and how bad actors spin up fake charities and crowdfunding pages, especially after disasters or in emotionally charged contexts.
Red flags they call out:
- Highly emotional stories with zero detail on how funds are used
- Requests to donate via crypto wallets, wire transfer or gift cards only
- No organizational history, no reporting, no governance
c) Real enforcement: Gaza scam and Singapore ban
This isn’t theoretical. Two recent cases underline how donation-style crowdfunding is being abused:
- In India, multiple reports uncovered a Gaza donation scam, where groups posed as conflict victims and allegedly raised crores of rupees from mosques and donors using fabricated stories and distress content; arrests have been made and more links are being investigated.
- In Singapore, the Commissioner of Charities has now barred Lim Kah Kheng from any future fundraising, after he was jailed for a multi-year donation scam that extracted over S$100,000 from more than 12,600 victims. The Commissioner explicitly framed it as protecting the public from people “who exploit the public’s trust and generosity for personal gain.”
Donation-style crowdfunding is now a frontline for fraud. Regulators, consumer agencies and fintech’s are actively educating and enforcing. Platforms that don’t visibly invest in fraud controls and transparency are going to look increasingly irresponsible.
This week’s big picture
Putting it together:
- Investment crowdfunding is in “cautious mode”, not collapse. Smaller cheques, more concentration around the big U.S. portals, but campaigns are still closing and Reg A+ continues to move meaningful capital.
- Major platforms are iterating the model, not abandoning it. Indiegogo’s Express Crowdfunding is basically an admission that the old “pay then wait in silence” user experience is no longer acceptable.
- Community capital is sticky when the brand is real. Nothing’s third community raise and Moby’s latest Spark round (with a big uplift for early investors) show that fans and users will keep backing businesses they believe in – across multiple rounds.
- Platform economics are getting tougher. LenderKit’s Reg CF analysis is basically a polite way of saying: if you’re not specialized and well-funded, don’t bother launching another generic portal.
- Donation fraud is now strategically targeted, and regulators know it. The FTC, Coinbase, Indian police and Singapore’s Commissioner of Charities are all pushing the same message: verify, verify, verify.
Quick guidance for founders, platforms and investors
Founders / Issuers
If you’re B2C or fintech with real users, seriously consider structured community rounds as part of your capital stack, and not as a last resort. Expect investors to be more cautious on cheque size but still present. Build campaigns for conversion and trust, not hype.
Platforms
UX and fulfilment now matter as much as “funding button”. Take a page from Indiegogo’s Express model and look at where your friction lives.
If you’re in Reg CF, assume you’re playing in a consolidated, data-driven, thin-margin market. You need a differentiator beyond “we’re also a portal”.
Investors / Backers
With investment deals: pay attention to platform quality, round structure and realistic milestones, not just story.
With donation campaigns: treat every link as guilty until proven innocent. If the platform and organizer can’t prove legitimacy, move on.
Crowdfunding is clearly not going away. It’s just growing up, even with all the awkwardness, consolidation, and regulatory nagging that implies.
