Committed vs raised
Why a $15M raise can hand a project $240k — and where the rest goes.
Two numbers appear on every raise page and people routinely confuse them, usually in the direction of thinking a project got rich. Committed is how much money backers put into escrow. Raised is how much the project actually receives. When a raise is popular, those numbers are nowhere near each other.
The goal is a cap, not a target
A raise goal on Backable behaves like a hard ceiling on what the project can receive. If a raise with a $240,000 goal attracts $15.3M in commitments, the project still receives $240,000. Everything above the goal stays with the backers who committed it, held by the same program, and each of them claims their share back.
Example Coffee Co
✓ FUNDEDRoast-to-order coffee with a market-governed treasury
| What | Amount |
|---|---|
| Committed during the raise | $15,300,000 |
| Raised — received by the project | $240,000 |
| Claimable back by backers | $15,060,000 |
How your allocation is decided
Everyone in a raise pays the same price per token. What differs is how many tokens your commitment buys, and that is decided by an accumulator that weights your commitment by how long it stayed in escrow. Money committed on day one accrues weight for the entire window; money committed in the final hour accrues almost none.
This solves a problem you have probably seen elsewhere. If allocation were purely proportional to size, a whale arriving in the last minute would take the raise. If it were first-come-first-served, the raise would be decided by who had the fastest connection at the opening bell. Time-weighting rewards conviction that showed up early and stayed.
A worked example
A $100k goal that attracts $400k
What to do with this when you read a raise page
While a raise is live, treat committed as a demand signal rather than a valuation. A raise sitting at 400% of goal is telling you that your effective allocation will be small and most of your money will be waiting for you to claim back, not that the project is worth four times more. After close, the number that matters is raised — that is the money the team actually has to build with, and it is what draws against.