I live near a suburban intersection that regularly has people from charities standing at the stop signs to collect money. I suspect the suburb is willing to let this happen for two reasons:

1. It is good for the city to allow local charities to be out in the community. This helps build good relationships between everyone. The charities then help people in the community.
2. The strategy is effective. The people collecting money are in direct eye contact with possible donors. As people come to a stop, they feel obligated to drop some change into the bucket or jug. While this method likely does not lead to large sums of money being donated by a single person, it can add up quickly.

On the other hand, this is an odd way to collect money for a few reasons:

1. Suburban drivers just want to get through the intersection, not be slowed down. Even if they do not give money and have an interaction with the person standing there, they have to be more careful with a person in the roadway.
2. Many drivers would respond much more negatively if another party was collecting money or soliciting people at this same spot. Many communities have homeless or jobless people sitting at intersections looking for help or people selling items or services (like squeegeing a windshield without the driver asking for it).
3. Having people stand in the roadway is generally not a good idea given the lack of attention paid to pedestrians.

Perhaps communities try to balance these two sides by only offering limited numbers of opportunities for charities to do this (it can’t happen every week, for example) or limiting activity to certain intersections where drivers are going slower and traffic is not impeded as much.

On the whole, this particular method is unusual and maybe only certain charities can get away with it with limited exposure to drivers.