Jeffrey Lurie to Receive Stuart Scott ENSPIRE Award

Jeffrey Lurie to Receive Stuart Scott ENSPIRE Award for Autism Advocacy

Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie will be honored during ESPYS week with the Stuart Scott ENSPIRE Award, a national recognition of his long-running work to expand autism research, care, and support through the Eagles Autism Foundation and the Lurie Autism Institute.

The award is part of ESPN’s Sports Humanitarian Awards and is scheduled to be presented July 14 in New York City ahead of the ESPYS. The honor recognizes people who have used sports in innovative ways to help underserved communities, while reflecting the values associated with the late ESPN broadcaster Stuart Scott.

Lurie’s selection centers on years of investment in autism initiatives that have grown from team-led fundraising into a major philanthropic platform. The Eagles launched the first Eagles Autism Challenge in 2018 as a bike ride and family-friendly 5K to support autism research and care. After the event’s early success, the Eagles Autism Foundation was established in 2019 to expand and organize that work.

Since then, the foundation has raised more than $56 million and funded more than 223 research projects and community grants around the world, according to the Eagles and CBS Philadelphia. In May alone, the 2026 Eagles Autism Challenge brought in more than $16 million through nearly 40,000 donations and 6,832 participants, marking another record-setting year for the initiative.

Lurie’s broader impact has extended beyond team programs. In 2025, the Lurie family donated $50 million to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine to establish the Lurie Autism Institute, described as the largest single gift to U.S. academic medical centers focused on autism research across the lifespan.

Taken together, Lurie’s efforts have contributed more than $106 million to autism research and care over the past decade. The work also reflects a deeper family history of supporting autism-related causes: in 1977, Lurie’s mother, Nancy, founded the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, which helped lead to the creation of the Lurie Center for Autism at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In a statement published by the team, Lurie said he was “truly humbled” by the honor and called it an example of the “transformative power of sport and the life-changing impact it can have on people.”

For Philadelphia, the recognition lands as more than a sports-business accolade. It underscores how one of the city’s most visible franchises has turned its platform into a funding engine for medical research, family services, and global autism advocacy — and how that work is now being recognized on one of sports’ biggest stages.