It would be fair to say this is tied pretty tightly to lack of business skills. I think most of us expect that on the "Most Admired/Least Admired Scale" market

It would be fair to say this is tied pretty tightly to lack of business skills. I think most of us expect that on the "Most Admired/Least Admired Scale" marketers clump towards the bottom, not the top. There are plenty of failed KickStarters/GoFundMe's to peruse, but this is endemic among non-profits. While many do NOT offer services that could be self-supporting, many others could be, but there is insufficient business or advertising understanding to pursue being successfully self-supporting. Among inventors, many pursue licensing or finding large partners (a reasonable idea, as far as it goes), but I've seen some pretty ridiculous advertising attempts. But the real gold mine is from the files of marketing consultants working with teachers/service providers. Only some clients are in the "trying to make the world a better place" category, but many overlap that. Here's where you really find the greatest numbers of admirable folks very out of their depth at marketing.