Jeff Blackman's article subtitled creative 'back door' strategies to find new customers is worth a second look.

Sponsorship allows you to capitalize on and leverage OPR: other people's relationships. First, let's define what a 'sponsor' is. A sponsor is an individual, company, organization or association that pursues and benefits from the same or similar target market(s) or target customer(s) as you. While your products and services are non-competitive, they're likely to be complementary.

Often times, sponsor seekers don't keep in mind the prerequisite alignment between themselves and their sponsor prospect(s). Rather than ask a sponsor to spend money, by offering among other things a link to the sponsor's website for example, while not recognizing that sometimes the sponsors are much bigger/larger with a wider audience than those seeking them, a 'partnership' benefiting all parties including the intended audience should be proposed. Just think of it as a threesome of sorts.

Creative sponsorship is a wide open space. Build your own solution, but do it with the sponsor in mind. And approach the sponsor before the campaign is developed. This way, in the end, you'll be able to ask the sponsor to 'contribute' their share of what they helped create. While all along keeping the audience updated on what to expect, as well as encourage their participation in the process, via social media.