As an Actuarial student at the Australian National University, I find SETI as an extremely meaningful activity where the entire world should contribute to. Searching for extraterrestrial life in this universe could mean a lot to the human race as what we know of the universe is very little.
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.