Through my writing and research, I have gleaned 12 practice-based principles for how to work with communities. I gleaned the 12 principles from the struggles of almost 100 community-oriented practitioners. The principles began life as a set of recurring themes for why community-oriented work often fails. I flipped these themes into 12 things that prospective community-oriented practitioners should consider to minimize their risk of failure. This tool has been created to help you understand, embrace and apply the 12 principles as part of your community health work.