Community‐based development practices have been seen as the prevailing paradigm for rural development. Rural community development practices are employed especially through local non‐governmental organisations, such as village associations, to ensure that rural communities are vital and attractive places to live. In this article, we explore how community development practices affect and shape rural places. The data were collected in three Finnish villages that each have an active village association and that have adopted community development practices as their method of keeping their village viable. According to the results of our study, the impacts of community practices on rural places can be classified in terms of three interconnected phenomena: the strengthening of entrepreneurial culture, the increase of networking and institutionalisation, which refers here to processes by which rural communities become incorporated in formal rural governance programmes. All of these phenomena indicate that community actions have become more goal‐oriented and emphasise the responsibility of community agency in developing rural areas.