Would certainly help. Although with most patreon's out there accepting donations in the range from 1$ to 1000$ depending on the supporter's interest, then I don't see why STEEM could not be used. Sure, your support may vary, but then people can always readjust their amounts. Also, if we have a good fiat gateway, then a backer could simply support the user with X amount of USD worth of STEEM per month that gets bought and transferred.

But yeah, a working SBD would be ideal. I think having a system like Patreon to drive more demand and volume to SBD, and also raise the STEEM price back up, would be one of the best ways to fix SBDs and thus enable it to work better.