Fogo Island, Newfoundland, opened to guests on 25 June 2013 and built for Shorefast, the registered Canadian charity founded in 2004 by the eighth-generation Fogo Islanders Zita, Alan and Anthony Cobb. The Newfoundland-born, Norway-based architect Todd Saunders set twenty-nine suites on stilts the island calls shores. It is the clearest case in this Library of a hotel owned by a charity rather than by investors, with every operating surplus returned to the island and the route of the money published as a label.
The house
Fogo Island carries a population of fewer than 3,000 and a four-hundred-year history as an outport community, and its fishery was cut away by the cod moratorium of 1992. Zita Cobb returned to her birthplace after a career in high technology, and in 2004 she and her siblings Alan and Anthony Cobb established Shorefast, a Canadian registered charity, number 85883 0904 RR0001. Shorefast built its businesses before it built the hotel: Fogo Island Arts in 2008 and Growlers Ice Cream in 2009. The Inn followed in 2013, financed by Cobb’s own money and by provincial and federal support, and opened with a staff of seventy, most of them islanders.
Todd Saunders, who founded Saunders Architecture and works from Norway, gave the house a four-storey wing holding all the rooms and suites, lifted on stilts the Inn calls shores after the fishing stages along the coast. The Inn says the building came out of eight years of collaboration and that nearly all its furnishings were created on Fogo Island, by artists and designers working with local makers under the design strategist Ernst Hupel. Fogo Island Workshops followed in 2014, Fogo Island Fish in 2015 and the Shorefast Institute for Place-Based Economies in 2025. The Inn marked its tenth year of operation in 2023 and was awarded Three MICHELIN Keys in 2024.
What distinguishes it
A charity owns the hotel and the hotel funds the charity Shorefast is a Canadian registered charity, number 85883 0904 RR0001, founded in 2004, and the Inn is described by the house as a one hundred per cent social business and an initiative of that charity. The Inn states that all operating surpluses are reinvested in the community of Fogo Island through Shorefast’s programmes and initiatives. The ownership is not a sponsorship arrangement bolted onto a hotel; the hotel exists because the charity needed a business.
The money is labelled the way food is Shorefast certified what it calls the Economic Nutrition certification mark in 2019, a label the Inn says shows how a stay impacts the local and global economy, under the question “Where does your money go?”. In 2025 the mark was extended beyond Shorefast to businesses and organisations across Canada. No other house in this Part publishes the destination of a night’s rate as a condition of selling it.
The building is raised on the island’s own structural vocabulary Todd Saunders set the four-storey accommodation wing on stilts that the Inn calls shores, mirroring the fishing stages along the coast, a form that suits rocky ground and limits the footprint. The Inn says the design came out of eight years of collaboration. The twenty-nine suites are all held in that one wing.
Almost everything inside was made within sight of the building The Inn states that nearly all its furnishings were created on Fogo Island, by contemporary artists and designers working with local makers under the design strategist Ernst Hupel. Fogo Island Workshops was established as a furniture and textile social business in 2014, and its items are priced to net a fifteen per cent surplus that is returned to Shorefast. The furniture is therefore a second revenue line for the charity, not a decorating scheme.
The hotel is one unit of a longer list Shorefast ran Fogo Island Arts from 2008, Growlers Ice Cream from 2009, Fogo Island Workshops from 2014, Fogo Island Fish from 2015 and the Shorefast Institute for Place-Based Economies from 2025. It also opened the Punt Premises in 2019 and ran a Community Economies Pilot from 2021 with four other Canadian communities and seventeen organisations, reporting on it in 2022. The Inn is the largest of these businesses and the one that pays for the rest.
The nearest airport is Gander International, and the house sits on an island of fewer than 3,000 people on Newfoundland’s North Atlantic coast, which makes the journey part of the price. There are twenty-nine suites and seventy staff, most of them neighbours, so a guest who wants anonymity will not find it. A guest who would rather not be told where the money goes will be told anyway.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.