Over the past several years, crowdfunding via the internet has become a popular way to engage public support – and financial backing – for all kinds of projects, from the Coolest Cooler to a virtual reality gaming headset to a prototype of a sailing spacecraft and a bailout fund for Greece. The area of journalism is no exception.

From April 28, 2009 to September 15, 2015, 658 journalism-related projects proposed on Kickstarter, one of the largest single hubs for crowdfunding journalism, received full – or more than full – funding, to the tune of nearly $6.3 million.

These totals – both in terms of number of projects and funds raised – trail nearly all of Kickstarter’s other funding categories, from music, theater and film to technology and games. Nevertheless, the number of funded journalism projects has seen an ongoing increase over time and includes a growing number of proposals from established media organizations.

From Kickstarter’s April 2009 launch through the end of the year, 17 journalism projects received funding. That number more than tripled just a year later, to 64 projects in 2010. Growth continued, reaching 168 funded projects in 2014 and 173 in the first nine months of 2015.

The amount of money put into these projects grew as well, from $49,256 in 2009 and $263,352 in 2010 to $1,743,668 in the first nine months of 2015.

Equally striking is the upward trend in the number of people contributing financially to these journalism projects – rising from 792 in 2009 to 25,651 in 2015.