Market Development Funds is how you put co-marketing money to work and prove it paid off. Allocate budgets to partners, let them propose projects, collect proof of spend, track ROI against real pipeline, and reimburse - every step a no-code form with its own approval flow, wired to your CRM, and workable from anywhere. Most MDF programs die in spreadsheets and email threads; this one is a governed, auditable, collaborative lifecycle.
The problem it solves
Impact
A partner asked to co-fund marketing is weighing your program against every other vendor’s. Being the one that answers on a deadline, and where the money actually follows, is how you get their budget next quarter.How this area works
A fund holds a budget for a period and decides which steps run. A partner proposes an activity, it is approved, they run it, they submit proof of what they spent and what it returned, and they are reimbursed. Every step is a form you build without code, so the whole chain lands in your CRM as it happens. Where this sits in a setup. MDF is a later-stage motion for programs with joint marketing budget. The co-sell and distributor tracks add it once partners are already producing. MDF in Introw is a full lifecycle, and each stage is its own building block you enable, customize, and govern: Every stage is a no-code form with its own CRM automations and approval, and every project is a real-time collaborative workspace the partner and your team share.Every step is a form, an approval, a project, and a timeline
Four things are true of every stage, which is what makes the program governable:No-code forms with CRM automations
Each step is a form you build without code, mapped to CRM objects and properties, so a submission lands as a clean, attributed record.
Agentic and human approval
Every form can auto-approve with an AI review above a certainty threshold, and route the rest through multiple sequential human approval steps.
A real-time collaborative project
Every project is a shared workspace where partners and your team comment, share files, and resolve questions together, live.
A timeline on every project
Each step carries a deadline (decision, claim, ROI, invoice), so everyone knows what is due and when, with overdue warnings.
Enable only the stages you use
MDF is not all-or-nothing. Each stage after the proposal can be turned on or off per your policy: proof of expense, ROI, invoicing. A simple program is proposal-and-approve; a strict one runs the full proof-and-reimburse chain. You decide the shape.One generic intake, your team picks the fund
Bigger programs run several funds at once, but a partner shouldn’t have to know which budget their idea belongs to. Introw separates intake from funding:- A single generic intake - embed one “Request marketing funds” block (or share one link) that isn’t tied to any fund. Partners describe the activity and the amount; they never choose a budget.
- It’s just a normal request - the submission lands in the MDF requests inbox like any proposal. A room admin picks the marketing fund from a dropdown on the request. Accept stays disabled until a fund is picked; collaborate, return and decline still work. Accepting creates the approved, fund-linked project through the same automation as a fund-specific request.
- Change it any time - a room admin can change the fund from the request’s Edit dialog, on the pending submission or the running MDF request. The change cascades to its claims, ROI and invoices. Room visitors can never change the fund.
MDF_REQUEST form tagged Generic, so its submissions flow into the same MDF inbox and lifecycle as fund-specific proposals.