That's not what "externalise" means. When a cost is externalised, it's taken on involuntarily by society at large. Since contributing to this organisation would be voluntary, that's clearly not what happens.

VCs and investors aren't creating the cost (so they can't externalise it), patent trolls are, and they do externalise it. Everybody is worse off when a startup (regardless of VCs and other investors) sinks hours into dealing with this, if they pay off the troll, and even worse off yet if the startup folds and a potentially valuable product isn't taken to market. That is an externality.

Also, there's a clear business case for VCs in contributing to a credible attempt at discouraging patent trolls at large, so it's quite likely that they'd donate to such an organisation - thus paying off a large part of the externality dumped onto society by the trolls.

How far do we go down this road? What else should we be donating for businesses to do? Should we be donating their electricity costs, healthcare costs, should we be donating our time as volunteers for them to run?

If investors want to join together to create such an organisation, let them, but (1) it really shouldn't be a non-profit (its entire purpose is to act as a legal arm for for-profit business), and (2) asking for donations from the public to keep it running is utterly ridiculous.

> Should we be donating their electricity costs, healthcare costs, should we be donating our time as volunteers for them to run?

Is there some point you were expecting a line to be crossed? "For profit" is an arbitrary designation created by the tax code. Should we not support researchers trying to cure cancer or generate clean energy because they anticipate turning a profit if they succeed?

If they anticipate turning a profit, why should I donate to them instead of investing in them or Kickstarting them? Why would I give them money to get... absolutely nothing out of it, but to make them richer?

For the same reasons that you might donate time or money to anything. Why should you tutor some disadvantaged kid for free without having an agreement that you get a percentage of future earnings? Why pay taxes or vote for the continued existence of taxes?

Because donors turning a profit isn't the point. Most startups fail. Getting a percentage of something which is probably going to turn out worthless is less important than shifting the ecosystem away from one in which promising startups are destroyed by trolls.