Why I participate? Well, when I stopped believing in a human soul and any religious and etherial life, a belief existance of life on other planets is the only thing I have left to make my ordinary, mundane life exiting.
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.