This is the devil that lives in the details. You have an industry of people who are trying to get these charitable donations, and the towns that can't afford that industry or don't have anything particularly commercializable to sell get left in the dust.
For every town that becomes Country Ham Town, you have hundreds of small towns who are "random postcard town" who only get a few bucks a year. It's tough to say if they even make money vs losing money on that.