fold.it is a lot more about the fact that humans still are a lot better at exploring complex spaces than computers. Analysis of results has shown players reaching semi-global minima in folding space much quicker than computers and designing novel folds that express and crystallize that have not been seen in nature before (which means they can explore more space than starting from known templates). Researchers are trying to learn from the types of moves that humans make in the game to improve algorithms, but humans are still better at searching, making very productive large moves in folding space.

So basically, this is less about funding and more about the fact that our algorithms aren’t good enough.