I use participate in SETI because I feel this is a worth while project and I'm glad to make use of the spare time available on my PC. I hope at some point in time there is a break through on all the data that I and the many, many others have been processing.
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.