People see it just fine.

The difference is that startups are generally very motivated to spend their money well, and non-profits are... not.

It's the difference between the profit motive (simple and easy to understand) and just hoping that the nonprofit leadership is individually motivated (which is much more communicated and hard to verify).

When a startup blows up from overspending, a few investors are out their own money. When a nonprofit does, it tends to stiff the well-meaning public that trusted it with their cash.

The two are not the same. Nobody cares about the rich making a bad investment, but whenever a nonprofit blows up it gets so much harder for the remaining ones to raise money.