I run SETI and have since my senior year of HS because I feel this is an important undertaking that I wish was sponsored better by the local and national governments. I beleive that if God made humans appear on this planet... why would he fill the rest of the space up with just empty, barren places? I feel stars are not just something pretty to look at.
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.