I run setiathome, because it's a geek's dream. To participate in the search. What a visionary idea, to participate in the search via a network of thousands of computers all over the globe.
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.