This is not a page of donate buttons

Two organisations work on Koh Samui itself, doing rescue, sterilisation and rehoming for street dogs and cats, and a foundation based in Phuket runs a mobile programme that reaches further south.

We found two organisations actually based on Koh Samui, each publishing its own donation page, and a third based in Phuket whose mobile programme reaches south but is not based here. One of the two on-island groups is registered in Thailand as well as abroad; the other states registrations only overseas, with no Thai registration on its own charity-information page. We link to all three and say which is which below.

A volunteer chapter on Koh Samui runs regular cleanups, clearing plastic and other washed-up rubbish from the island's beaches as part of a cleanup network active in many countries.

The Samui chapter is entirely volunteer-run and holds no registration of its own; its donation page belongs to the worldwide network, registered abroad, so a gift there funds the network rather than this island's chapter. What the chapter itself needs most is not money but hands on a beach on a Saturday morning, and that is the most useful thing a reader can actually give here.

Coral bleaching and reef damage affect the waters around Koh Samui, and the closest organised, auditable response we could find is reef restoration work over on Koh Tao.

We could not find a reef restoration organisation registered or based on Koh Samui itself. The closest auditable work is a reef conservation programme on Koh Tao, running coral and giant clam nurseries and reef monitoring, funded mainly by its own course fees rather than by public donations. We link to it because the work is real and documented, even though it happens on a different island.

Macaques on and around Koh Samui are affected by the coconut-picking and monkey-show trades, and nothing addressing this is registered on the island itself.

Nothing on Koh Samui is registered to take this on. The nearest recipient is a registered Thai foundation up in Phetchaburi that takes in rescued macaques and has campaigned to close a monkey show on this island, so its work reaches Samui even though its centre does not sit here.

Merit-making and the upkeep of Koh Samui's temples happen through direct, in-person giving rather than through any organisation we could find.

We looked for a temple fund on Koh Samui that publishes accounts or runs a channel we could check online, and found none: no temple here does. Giving to a temple on this island is done in person, on the day, whether that is cash placed in a box, an envelope handed to a monk, or food offered in the morning. There is no link to give here because there is nothing we could verify to link to.

Schools and children's welfare on Koh Samui matter to many visitors, and this is the one cause where we are choosing not to link anywhere at all.

We are not linking here on purpose. Donor money aimed at children's homes and volunteer placements creates demand for children to fill them, keeps children who have living families in institutions, and organisations working on child welfare in this region have spent years asking travellers to stop giving this way. If you want to help children on Koh Samui, the route is a school or a community group you have actually visited, not a payment sent from abroad.