TDG is a classic republican structure. The whole purpose of a republican structure is to serve as a compromise between pure nobility and democracy, and what's created is an oligarchy that is somewhat democratically accountable. Basically, traditional membership-nonprofits like the Sierra Club are governed very similarly to the TDG structure "A president is elected annually by the Board from among its members." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Club#Overview - When you have any middle tier like a Board of Directors that elects a higher tier like the org-president, a lot of people tend to perceive the whole outcome/result as akin to oligarchy: "William Devall, “The Governing of a Voluntary Organization: Oligarchy and Democracy in the Sierra Club,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Oregon, 1970." https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/studies-in-american-political-development/article/abs/from-conservation-to-environment-the-sierra-club-and-the-organizational-politics-of-change/21EC3A773ACBD669AA8434046A41A036 - As far as I can tell, procedurally your TDG idea is just a distilled version of a traditional republic/membership-nonprofit structure, and what makes TDG more unique is not the election/appointment process but rather the "prohibition" on campaigning and some other principles like that. I'm not saying any of this to be critical; I think republican and traditional membership nonprofit structures are fantastic, and while I do like the idea of direct democracy, I acknowledge that republican/membership-nonprofit structures are still democratically-accountable enough and waaaaaaaay more moral and humanitarian than any other form of organizational governance.