CORE Problems

Sean Penn’s nonprofit grew from a modest disaster-relief operation into a pandemic hero. Yet employees and partners say it’s also a chaotic mess where allegations of sexual harassment went ignored

- Sophie Alexander

Sean Penn didn’t have to do any of this. His biggest supporters and detractors can agree on that. A little over a year ago, his party at Soho Beach House, a private club in Miami Beach, was the hottest event at Art Basel, the annual international fair. The beachfront venue was packed with around 200 of the actor-turned-activist's friends and acquaintances, including Leonardo DiCaprio, pop star Anitta and Delphine Arnault, heir to the biggest fortune on Earth. Later in the evening, Anitta sang Girl From Rio, and a charity auction raffled off NFTs and an Andy Warhol sketch. All told, the party raised $1.6 million for Penn’s nonprofit, CORE Response, that invitations and promotional materials said was earmarked for its Covid relief efforts in Latin America. A CORE employee involved in the fundraising says Anitta hosted the event on the condition that some of the money would go to her home country of Brazil, the only place in the region where CORE had any Covid relief programs of note around that time. The backdrop for the event was a massive map showing where CORE promised to put the money to use.