Leveraging Place in Community-based Enterprises to Create Long-Term Impact

Community-based enterprises (CBEs) are organizations embedded in communities that aim to address local challenges and contribute to community development. Within research on CBEs, it is often assumed that these organizations typically emerge in contexts of high community support. This paper challenges this core assumption through a case study of the Bonne Bay Cottage Hospital Heritage Corporation (BBCHHC), a CBE that launched with limited initial community support and yet contributed to local development for twenty years. This study shows how the BBCHHC was able to increase community support for their organization by leveraging their embeddedness in the community to foster a sense of place among community members for a local heritage building. As more community members developed a deeper connection and attachment to this building, they began to value the work of the BBCHHC, and local support for the organization slowly grew. This increasing community support enabled the organization to become more financially sustainable, pursue new local initiatives, and create long-term impact in the community.