Tournament Help

As far as fishing tournaments go I have not yet had the opportunity to participate in one. I watch quite a bit of tournament fishing on tv, and highly enjoy it. My problem I’m a kayak angler in the Midwest. I am trying like crazy to spread the word about this great style of fishing, it is still in the underground stages here. I even started a kayak fishing website that is still in the developmental stages www.thekayakfishingsite.com in hopes of being able to connect with kayak anglers in the Midwest. I’m hoping to also use twitter and facebook as networking tools to reach out to other kayak anglers.
I currently would like to start a kayak fishing tournament and am not so sure how one would go about doing that. There are great lakes and rivers in the area that are perfect for kayak fishing and would be great spots to hold a fishing tournament or derby. My thoughts are this on starting a tournament. I would like to find a charitable cause that the proceeds of the tournament could go to. I assume that finding sponsors will really be the difficult part, there really are no “paddle” shops in this area, though there are tackle/bait shops that might help. I also realize that I’m going to need permission from the forest preserve or villages where these lakes are located.
I guess the point to this blog is to see from those that have done it, what it takes to start up a tournament or even just a little fishing derby. Are there better ways than others to go about getting sponsors, or advertisers, or just good people to back you up? I would appreciate any info you can send my way and if you happen to kayak fish in the chicagoland area look me up and lets go fishing.

As always, send me an e-mail on any help you could give, I would greatly appreciate it nocoastkayak@yahoo.com