In its ninth season honoring NFL players who do good in their hometowns and team cities, the NFLPA’s Community MVP program elevated its charitable impact to new heights, hosting a player giveback event during Super Bowl week while using cutting-edge content to engage with fans and commemorative items to show how athletes are also superhero servant leaders in their communities.
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What began as a series of weekly tweets highlighting the many ways that players give back has evolved over the past decade into a season-long philanthropic campaign across multiple platforms. The NFLPA Community MVP initiative features substantial donations to athletes’ various causes, new opportunities for player charitable outreach and engaging content that provides fans with a fresh sense of how each honoree has personally impacted those in need.
Each week during the NFL regular season, the NFLPA recognized one player for giving back to his community by providing a $10,000 donation to his foundation or charity of choice and shared a digital commemorative magazine cover spread illustrating his off-the-field work (created by supporting partner HEARTLENT Group).
With these 18 MVPs making a difference in various pockets of the country, what better way to
culminate this year’s campaign than by bringing some of these same players to one place – the Super Bowl host city – all with the same mission: Give their youngest fans in that community an experience they will never forget.
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The NFLPA partnered with HEARTLENT Group to create magazine covers commemorating the
contributions that earned each player Community MVP honors. The spread featured a player portrait on the cover, humanizing them through an animation feature that opened the magazine to display more pictures of the athletes working to help others.
Finally, the NFLPA hosted its first Community Day during Super Bowl week in Phoenix. Thirteen players participated in a field day at a local elementary school featuring food, fun activities and music. All students received a gift bag filled with a commemorative magazine featuring all 18 Community MVP cover spreads, special-edition Community MVP trading cards and three diversity-based books.
The Title 1 school also received a $5,000 donation from the NFLPA to aid the development of this young group of fans. And in partnership with Uninterrupted, 20 students earned a trip to the media company’s pop-up shop activation later that week for free haircuts, games and food.
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The Community MVP’s upward trend in engagement numbers and charitable impact reached
unprecedented levels during the 2022-23 season. Content for Community MVP and the Alan Page Community Award accounted for more than a quarter of the NFLPA’s social media posts, resulting in nearly 9 million impressions and nearly 80,000 engagements.
