Market development funds (MDF) are budgets a vendor gives partners to spend on marketing activity that generates demand for the vendor's product, claimed against evidence and usually approved before the money is committed.
Also called: MDF, marketing development funds, co-op funds.
The logic is that a partner knows their market better than you do, so a pound of marketing spent by them beats a pound spent by you. The risk is that MDF is the easiest line in a partner program to waste, because the partner is spending someone else's money on activity only they can see.
That is why almost every MDF program runs on pre-approval and proof of performance. The partner proposes the activity, the vendor approves a budget, the activity happens, and the claim is paid against evidence: the event, the campaign, the leads it produced.
MDF is usually discretionary and forward-looking: the vendor allocates it to a partner for a specific plan, often to open a new market or launch a product. Co-op funds are typically earned, accruing as a percentage of what the partner has already sold, and the partner decides how to spend the balance within agreed rules.
Plenty of programs use the terms interchangeably. What matters in practice is whether the fund is allocated or accrued, since that decides who initiates the conversation.
Tie the claim to an outcome that was named in the request. If the proposal said a webinar producing thirty qualified leads, the claim is assessed against thirty qualified leads, not against the invoice for the webinar platform. Programs that only check that the money was spent get activity, not demand.
The other control is a hard expiry on unspent allocation. Funds that roll forever accumulate into a balance nobody is accountable for.
How Airstride does it
Airstride runs MDF requests, approvals and claims against the tier the partner holds, with the evidence attached to the claim rather than in an inbox.
MDF managementLast updated 28 July 2026
