I believe it is possible that extraterrestrial life exists, but not in a form that we would recognize. I think when the time is right, the extraterrestrials will contact us. I would suspect that their civilization(s) may be incomprehensible to humans.
I think that sending beacons is a start to finding other life forms and for other life forms to find us. I wonder if they already know we exist and just don't care?!
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.