Advisory Board Purgatory

This has been a long discussion this week regarding an Advisory Board that I am on.

The title of my Blog comes from a blog post by Tara Levy by the title "Avoid Advisory Board Purgatory", an article that a few of us have been quoting to try and deal with our situation.

An Advisory Board does not have any authority to deal with the policy and procedures of an organization.  When I was the president of the Board of a nonprofit, I thought that it was great to have such a "super group" to assist us when we needed, but actually I found it difficult in practice to communicate with this group along with my normal business, family and nonprofit Presidential duties...  (My change to our policy was to 'trap' all of the Past Presidents on the Advisory Board, so that we would always have their institutional knowledge and passion for the organization..., so here I am...)

We attempted to build a bridge between the Board and the Advisory Board by using the Past President as the liaison to the Advisory Board.  Now that I'm a part of the Advisory Board, I'm wondering why I am here and what the organization really needs from me?  It is hard to find out what is going on in the organization directly - I normally hear from other volunteers...

How can our Advisory Board assist when we know nothing more than other interested (or non-interested) individuals?

What has been your experience participating on an Advisory Board?  What insight can you give me?