Unfortunately, many people do not care about the long-term health of the platform or even the long-term benefits they could get from that. What they care about is profitable transactions right now and when they get lucrative offers to delegate, they delegate as they don't feel like leaving that income on the table.
Are the projects you have in mind capable of offering the whales a similar return on their delegation?
If you want to do the arithmetic, they probably can't, but there is something many people don't realize. The delegation and voting bot business might be profitable, but it comes at a cost. It is limiting the growth potential of the platform and is hurting its image. And in the crypto world image and trust are value.
If the voting bots weren't hogging up so much of the resources and rewards, the steem blockchain would have more resources to thrive in a sustainable way which could in turn allow the price of steem to climb faster. And no venture can really match the return a skyrocketing steem price could provide.
Whales need to understand that supporting meaningful project can not only be something charitable they do with their steem power, but also a very good investment in the future of the currency. And the people who would benefit the most from that would be the largest stake-holders. Which is them.