2020 saw a significant increase in crowdfunding in Italy: + 90% as regards the equity sector. With the world closed at home because of the lockdown, the social campaigns in support of initiatives, business projects or charitable causes have raised millions of euros in record time, also demonstrating the platform's maturity in managing a similar audience success. Italy, which was a precursor country in terms of crowdfunding with the regulation Consob in 2013, it saw a total collection of almost 340 million euros (the figure was taken from the annual report of Starteed). Crowdfunding records are broken year after year, testifying to the effectiveness and attractiveness of a tool that appeals to large and small (or even micro) investors. To facilitate this ecosystem, the new EU Regulation on crowdfunding services establishing a common minimum discipline to align all countries and encourage the internationalization of the countryside.
Crowdfunding: what the new EU regulation says
Approved in October 2020, the regulation will only come into force in the coming months and will allow crowdfunding platforms to activate collection campaigns anywhere in Europe. As we read on Digital Agenda, users will also be able to invest through European platforms that access the investor's reference market. However, a limiting aspect of the new regulatory framework for crowdfunding in Italy is dictated by the maximum collection ceiling: 5 million euros. Recently, in our country, some campaigns have touched the collection limit set at 8 million euros by Consob regulation. The CEO of Backtowork Alberto Bass commented so: «The lowering of the maximum amount could prove to be a limit in relation to important collection campaigns carried out with the support of private banking».
Net of this situation, opening up to new opportunities and new markets represents a precious opportunity for the startups, companies and all those Italian entrepreneurial initiatives that look to crowdfunding as a fundamental source of financing in their growth path. Since it started its annual survey Starteed calculated that in Italy the sector recorded overall over 778 million euros collected. «Even for 2021 expectations are high - reads the official website of the institute - Crowdfunding has proved to be a useful tool that resists the unforeseen circumstances of a rapidly evolving economic and social context. The hope also lies in a greater awareness and tendency to give on the part of Italians who in 2020 contributed to a crowdfunding campaign for the first time, thanks to a strong awareness given by the emergency context ».
Crowdfunding for the recovery
Among the news that have made the most of public opinion in the last year related to crowdfunding there have been fundraisers for charitable works. In 2020, for example, the rapper Fedez and the digital entrepreneur Chiara Ferragni they had launched a campaign to allocate funds to Hospital San Raffaele of Milan (almost 5 million euros donated) in one of the most dramatic moments of the epidemic. In 2021, with the health crisis that seems to be on the way to a definitive solution, crowdfunding can still be useful for all those sectors affected by the lockdown.
