Talk about reviving an old thread! I think the majority of the problem is that for many people, it is better for them to donate cash directly, rather than spend electricity BitCoining, then donating the bitcoin.
It depends on your electricity cost.

There is of course what happened last week, with BitCoins losing half their value. One hopes GPUGrid did not have to many Bitcoins stashed away and did not lose too much.

There is also the opinion out there that BitCoins are being used as a way of money laundering, though it has attracted the attention of regulators recently so hopefully that issue will clear up.

But, as you say, it's a free choice, so if you want to, go for it!

There is of course what happened last week, with BitCoins losing half their value. One hopes GPUGrid did not have to many Bitcoins stashed away and did not lose too much.

You skipped the bit where BC's doubled in value, http://blockchain.info/charts/market-price
Today (after the crash) the value is about 2.5 times what it was a month ago. A block of 25 would bring in $2750 - That could fund a researcher for a month.
So far it's certainly helped fund this research project, and thus fulfilled it's purpose. IMO better than crunching Pi...

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I still would find it great when it could be possible to get a krone here on gpugrid when someone calculate a defined monthly or weekly (or whatever ^^) amount of credits on donate witch is like spending money ;)

I, as example, could bring 60M in full three months on my 7950 witch is soon "without" work from HCC and i would do that. At the moment i would activate it on Einstein or as replacement of the 4850 on MW to get a second card from my desk into play again for POEM too.

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