SETI is the kind of project where it's very hard to justify resources being expended on it. Face it, we're looking for a very tiny needle in a very big haystack. The only way you're going to get serious computing power devoted to it is thru something like SETI@Home. Plus it satisfies the misanthrope in me. There must be intelligent life in the universe, and we're proving that it's smart enough not to talk to us.:)
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.