Ask HN: Looking for Private or Corporate Sponsorship

I've been running a small startup for over 2 years and it has progressively grown to over 5000+ members, 160 paying subscribers, an offline product, receives over a million page views/month, and receives over 70K visitors/month all on a shoestring budget with little to no marketing efforts.

What I'd like to do is kick it up to the next level as the numbers seem to support a lucrative expansion (50 - 100 fold). My first thought was to approach corporations that occupy the same space but do not have a community based following and offer them the opportunity to sponsor our project. Studies have shown that sponsorship creates a stronger relationship with a target customer than pure advertising.

In contrast to pure advertising here is an article that defines the distinction: http://www.suite101.com/blog/ekennen/sponsorship_versus_advertising

I'd like to ask HN if anyone has attempted this type of funding, if it panned out, and how it was achieved (ie email pitch, direct contact).