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Donation bins for nonperishable goods are there for a few reasons.

1. Promote Awareness of the Food Bank, and to create connections with either potential clients or donors. Having a presence that you walk by on your way to buy lettuce can have a long term benefit on name recognition.

2. Improve store relations. Donors buy products from the store at full-markup, and the store has more incentive to continue to support its own community initiatives from the reminder that the store supports the food bank. Grocery stores tend to have some autonomy on the causes they can support.

3. Some people genuinely do not like the idea of donating money to the food bank. They prefer the physical act of buying something to donate, whether it be because they're worried about mismanagement of funds, the money going towards paying staff, or wanting to have a direct impact on the program itself (I only want my money to go towards food). Some people limit their contributions to stuff that's about to expire in a month from quarterly pantry clearing, or when they're about to move.

On a side note, some people don't want to end up on a fundraising list or hassled for donations. Cans are effectively anonymous. A small donation of $10 to a food bank that sends out quarterly fundraising mailouts can mean $6 of your donation went into fundraising.