1% for Bali: Where Your Pool's Contribution Goes
One percent of revenue from every pool we build goes to a Bali-based charity of your choosing. The island gives this business its water, its plants and its craftspeople. Giving something back is the least the arrangement deserves.
The choice is yours, and it doesn’t have to come from this page — if you already support something here, tell us and we’ll send it there. But most clients ask us who we’d suggest, so this is our honest answer.
How we picked these
We looked for organisations that are demonstrably active, that publish real numbers rather than mission statements, and where you can find out who actually runs them. Several well-known Bali names didn’t make the list because we couldn’t establish a legal entity, couldn’t find any activity since 2023, or couldn’t find a way to give them money.
Where we quote a figure below, we say where it came from and whether anyone independent has checked it. Where an organisation is doing excellent work but hasn’t published hard numbers, we say that too.
Rivers and waterways
Sungai Watch
Founded in 2020 by siblings Gary, Kelly and Sam Bencheghib, Sungai Watch designs and builds floating trash barriers, installs them in Balinese rivers, and empties and sorts the catch daily with paid local staff. They also clean illegal dumpsites and publish brand audits naming the companies whose packaging they pull out of the water.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award — Asia’s most prestigious civic prize, and a genuine independent vetting process — recognised Gary Bencheghib in 2022, citing 150 barriers in Bali and over a million kilograms of waste collected (Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation). By June 2026 the Jakarta Post reported 2,976 tonnes removed in Bali since 2020 (Jakarta Post).
If your pool is about giving water back, this is the most direct match on the list.
Groundwater and drinking water
IDEP Foundation — Bali Water Protection
Yayasan IDEP Selaras Alam has been running since 1999, which makes it one of the island’s longest-serving environmental organisations. Their Bali Water Protection programme builds rainwater-fed groundwater recharge wells — the same principle as the recharge pits we fit on sites where the ground allows it.
They are, as far as we can find, the only organisation in Bali systematically putting water back into the aquifer. Given that Bali’s freshwater aquifers have been drawn down to less than 20% of capacity, that matters more than its profile suggests. Their research with Bali State Polytechnic has demonstrated a single well-designed recharge well returning up to 41,000 litres of groundwater per hour during rainfall.
They also supplied much of the water-crisis data behind our Sponge Island article.
East Bali Poverty Project
Founded in 1998 by David Booth, working in the isolated volcanic highlands of Desa Ban, Karangasem — among the poorest and driest parts of Bali. Water and sanitation infrastructure, schools, health posts, bamboo agroforestry.
Their cumulative figures since 1998: 2,400 families given access to safe water and 1,515 families given toilet and bathroom blocks, alongside 6 schools and 48 community health centres (East Bali Poverty Project). They’re registered both as an Indonesian yayasan and a UK company, and they’re vetted by GlobalGiving and Give2Asia, both of which run their own due diligence.
Waste and plastic
Merah Putih Hijau
Operating under Yayasan Bumi Sasmaya, MPH does the unglamorous thing: instead of cleanups, they build village-level waste separation systems that stop rubbish reaching the river in the first place. Household source-separation, community Eco-Champions, village facility upgrades, and waste management for large events including the Bali Arts Festival.
They work across villages in Gianyar and beyond, with partners including the Norwegian-backed CLOCC programme. They publish less hard data than we’d like — but fixing the system upstream is worth more than any tonnage figure downstream.
Yayasan R.O.L.E. Foundation — ZeroWaste Center
Based in Nusa Dua, R.O.L.E. runs waste-management training for local government, businesses and schools, monthly beach cleanups with proper waste separation, and upcycled soap production employing local women. Their Bali WISE programme has trained over 1,750 marginalised young Indonesian women for hospitality careers.
Airbnb announced corporate support for them in February 2026, which means at least one large organisation has run diligence on them.
Reefs and the wider island
Coral Triangle Center
Sanur-based, running marine protected area management, training, and coral restoration in the Nusa Penida MPA. Their Adopt-a-Coral programme is the most tangible giving product on this list — you can point at the thing your money did.
Their five-year review is refreshingly precise and unspun: 1,110 coral fragments transplanted between July 2023 and December 2025, 74 Reef Stars installed, roughly 44.4 m² of degraded reef restored, at an average survival rate around 80% (Coral Triangle Center). Forty-four square metres is a small area, and the fact that they say so rather than dressing it up is exactly why we trust the rest.
If accountability is your priority
Yayasan Kopernik
Ubud-based, working on practical technology for underserved communities — including solar seawater desalination on Nusa Penida, where residents pay for drinking water with recyclables. After the September 2025 floods they delivered relief to more than 1,450 people across 350+ households with Bali’s disaster agency, and published an itemised, costed breakdown of exactly what was bought.
Kopernik publishes audited financial reports covering 2010 through 2025. For an Indonesian NGO that is genuinely exceptional, and if you want maximum assurance about where money lands, this is the one.
Social enterprises — a different category
These aren’t charities, and we’ve kept them separate rather than blur the line. They’re businesses with a genuine giving channel: you pay, someone else receives something. Worth knowing about, with the difference stated plainly.
Terra Water Indonesia
Denpasar-based, making and selling natural ceramic drinking-water filters since 2020. Their social programme places filters in schools and villages, funded by businesses and individuals.
The projects are specific and recent. In 2025 they placed 11 filters in two Tabanan schools, reaching over 273 students and 18 staff, funded by Akura Villas. An earlier project with Gojek’s foundation reached 1,317 people in Makassar. A single filter, they estimate, displaces 3,640 plastic gallons over its life (Terra Water). A US$30 donation covers a family for roughly two years.
Be clear about what you’re doing: Terra trades as PT Tirta Cupu Manik, a company. We could find no registered yayasan behind the giving programme, so a donation is a payment to a business that then places a filter — not a gift to a charity. There’s no charity-law accountability, no restricted-funds obligation and no tax deductibility, and no published financials. That doesn’t make it a bad use of money — the filters are real and the projects are documented — but it’s a different thing from giving to a foundation, and you should choose it knowing that.
Choosing yours
Tell us at any point before handover — at the consultation, during the build, or when we hand over the pool. We’ll make the donation in your name and send you the receipt.
If you’d rather nominate an organisation that isn’t listed here, that’s genuinely fine. The only thing we ask is that it’s Bali-based, so the money stays on the island that supplied the project.
Book a free design consultation and we can talk about it then.
We are not affiliated with any organisation on this page and we receive nothing for listing them. Figures are quoted with their sources and were current when we checked them in August 2026. Charities change; if you spot something here that’s out of date, tell us and we’ll fix it.