The X Prize

This one you can donate to or compete in. The X Prize Foundation gives out prizes to teams that develop certain new technologies, the prizes being $10 million or more. I first heard about this at the time of the Ansari X Prize, which was meant to encourage the technology for a viable commercial space plane. The current competitions have to do with a more efficient car, lunar rovers, and medicine and genetics. If you want to help, tell a friend, or even donate money. If you think you've got what it takes, you can consider competing, but if nothing else, it'd be good to take a look at what they're doing.

BOINC

So, a while back I downloaded a program called BOINC from UC Berkeley. What it is, is after you download it, you sign up with a research project and your computer does math and runs simulations for it in the background while you do other stuff. You only see the icon in the taskbar though. You can choose to help projects that have to do with things like space, medicine, food supplies, superconductors, fusion energy and much more. This is a great way to help advance science and technology with almost no effort at all.