My reference to the State Department was an oversimplification. The money actually comes from the Broadcasting Board of Governors which is a separate government agency. Nevertheless, it still has close links to the State Department and the Secretary of State (now Hillary Clinton) is one of the board members.

A few details on financing can be found in this document which says:

The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which oversees the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), has promoted Internet freedom in China by focusing on its Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) websites, which are regularly blocked by Chinese authorities. In 2001, the BBG provided $100,000 to Safeweb Inc., a government contracted company that had also been briefly funded by the CIA, to provide proxy servers to help Chinese Internet users access prohibited information. However, within a year, Safeweb’s technology was reportedly unsuccessful in protecting user identities.

Since 2003, the IBB has primarily funded Dynamic Internet Technology (DynaWeb) and UltraReach, which have each developed software to enable Chinese Internet users to access VOA and RFA websites (see table).

The table lists funding from the BBG/IBB for DynaWeb (Freegate) and UltraReach (UltraSurf) for three years up to 2005:

DynaWeb:
2003: $497,300
2004: $806,326
2005: $685,000

UltraReach:
2003: $3,000
2004: $21,000
2005: $42,003

Given the large increase in users of UltraSurf, I would expect its funding to have risen considerably since 2005, but that’s just a guess.