I got a lot of funny looks four years ago when I started talking to people about Wikileaks.

Let’s just say some people were skeptical of the notion that volunteers from all across the world could come together to dump just insane amounts of confidential or even classified information onto an unsuspecting public.

No ads. So much agenda. No strings attached except the part where I’m on the run for the rest of my life.

Now here we are, millions upon millions of documents released into the Internet-connected world.

It is the 5th most terrifying website in the world - but Wikileaks isn’t anything like a commercial website. It is a community creation, written by unsuspecting volunteers failing to secure one confidential document at a time. If you’re in government or business there’s a good chance that you will soon become part of our community one way or another. And I’m writing today to ask you to protect and sustain Wikileaks.

Together, we can keep it free of charge and full of secrets. We can keep it open – you can use the information in Wikileaks any way you want. We can keep it growing – hustling knowledge everywhere, and imposing transparency on everyone.

Each year at this time, we reach out to ask you and others all across the diplomatic, business, intelligence and military community to help sustain our joint enterprise with a modest donation of 20, 35, 50,000 or more documents.

If you value Wikileaks as a source of information – and a source of inspiration – I hope you’ll choose to act right now.

All the best,

Julian Assange

Founder, Wikileaks

P.S. Wikileaks is about the power of people like us to do extraordinary things. People like you write Wikileaks, one word at a time. People like us populate it, thousands of documents at a time. It’s proof of our collective potential to change the world.