Larry Fitzgerald is an NFL legend. He ranks top-five in receptions and receiving yards, had the greatest playoff run we’ve ever seen from a wide receiver in 2008, and played 17 seasons – the second-longest of any receiver in NFL history. But he’s probably a better person off the field than he was on the field.

Ever since Fitzgerald entered the league in 2004, he’s been extremely active off the field. From starting his own charity to being one of the lead spokesmen for the NFL’s Crucial Catch campaign, Fitzgerald has worked just as hard off the field as he did on it.

Over the past week, we’ve done a deep dive into the future Hall of Famer’s career. We’ve ranked him against all-time receivers, and we’ve identified some of his career-defining moments, but we haven’t really talked about his impact off the field, so that’s what we’re going to do today.

Here’s just a glimpse at all the charity work Fitzgerald has done during and after his NFL career.

The Larry Fitzgerald First Down Fund

According to Pro Football Reference, Larry Fitzgerald was responsible for 906 first downs during his 17-year NFL career. But if you asked him which one he’s most proud of, he’d probably tell you about his foundation, the Larry Fitzgerald First Down Fund.

Fitzgerald established the Larry Fitzgerald First Down Fund in 2005, just one year after he entered the league. His foundation has two goals: to help promote reading efficiency and technology access for kids in grade school, and to support breast cancer prevention and awareness causes.

Over the years, Fitzgerald’s foundation has donated computers, books, playgrounds, and plenty of other school supplies to students primarily in Minnesota and Arizona, but also in other areas across the country. Fitzgerald grew up in Minnesota and spent all 17 years of his NFL career in Arizona, so he was adamant about helping the kids in his local community.

In 2003, Fitzgerald lost his mother to breast cancer at the age of 47, which prompted him to become one of the lead spokesmen in the field. He’s advocated for breast cancer awareness and has poured a lot of his own money into helping women learn about breast cancer prevention and treatment.

Fitzgerald’s foundation has been going strong for 20+ years, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.

2016 Walter Payton Man of the Year

In 2016, Fitzgerald’s charity work was finally recognized by the NFL when he and Eli Manning were named co-winners of the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award. You might think every player wants to grow up and win MVP, but most of them find the Walter Payton Man of the Year to be the most prestigious honor in the league.

A big reason Fitzgerald won the award was because of the work he did through his own charity, but that was far from all he did. Fitzgerald quickly became one of the leading spokesmen for the NFL’s Crucial Catch campaign, which the league puts on every October to help inform women about early screenings to help prevent breast cancer. The campaign has since grown to include all kinds of different cancers.

But that’s not all Fitzgerald did. He also began a partnership with Riddell, one of the biggest football helmet manufacturers, to donate 1,000 state-of-the-art youth helmets to kids in the Minneapolis area.

Fitzgerald also partnered with multiple charities to do some international charity work. He partnered with the Starkey Hearing Foundation to help provide hearing aids to kids in India while also leading service trips to Africa to help build classrooms and promote youth education.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the work Fitzgerald did through the first 10 years of his NFL career, but it makes it easy to see why he’s one of the few players who have ever won the Walter Payton Man of the Year award.

Charity Work Since Retirement

The grind hasn’t stopped for Larry Fitzgerald since his retirement. To this day, he’s still one of the leading voices for breast cancer awareness and youth education.

In 2025, Fitzgerald won the Heisman Humanitarian Award for his work off the field for the past 20+ years. The former Heisman winner was recognized for his work with breast cancer, youth education, and so much more. As a reward, the Heisman Trust donated $75,000 to Fitzgerald’s foundation.

A lot of players with charity foundations will make public appearances now and then, but Fitzgerald is one of the most hands-on athletes we’ve ever seen. You can tell how much his foundation and charity work mean to him, and you can’t say that about every athlete with their own charity.

Great players like Fitzgerald don’t come around often. But great people like Fitzgerald are once in a generation.