Understanding sponsorship
The answer to the question, "how are you going to pay for this project?" is turning out to be sponsorship more and more often. If you don't know why organizations want to sponsor things, though, it's likely a long, hard road to find the sponsorship you seek.
As the number of media options continue to explode (blogs, books, conferences, tattoos, speaking engagements, film festivals, stadiums, entire websites...) it's worth thinking a little bit about why organizations buy sponsorships.
1. It might be a substitute for advertising. How many people see it? How much does it cost per person? (this is the cpm, but instead of cost per thousand page views or magazine readers, it's cost per thousand impressions, which come in a myriad of ways). I think this is the film festival/book fair model. It's a reasonable way to reach a hard to reach, high value group.