Our Linus group has a volunteer that is a professional long armer. Since she has a professional business, she doesn't have time to attend our weekly get togethers to sew, but we would love to have her if she ever has the chance to attend. She completes about 3-4 quilts per month for us and that is such a big relief. Thats 20 hours of time we can be working on other quilts. Further, we really appreciate how much she elevates our work. We love her!
I would still contact Linus headquarters to see if anyone else in your area is interested in starting a Chapter. You might find that there is already a coordinator for your region of the state, even though you don't have a local chapter. Our coordinator has a large district which encompasses many volunteer groups. Our group just does quilting, but other groups do crocheting and fleece blankets. Our coordinator collects blankets from all of these different groups and delivers them to 22 different organizations in the area. That is one reason that she has to work so many more hours.
In our local group, we don't really have a named leader. There is one lady who works with our group to get the quilts to the coordinator and presents us with any PL business. She doesn't put in 30 hours a week for admin stuff. She probably puts in an hour or two on most weeks and then when we have about 30-40 quilts, she will deliver them to our coordinator. Sometimes there are special events in the area that take a bit more work such as if there is a conference in town that wants to set up a PL room. That only happens maybe once a year. We have another lady who handles the weekly announcements (where the meeting will be held), list of quilts, and the email list of members. We have another lady that works with the two of them to handle everything else. Like I said, our group doesn't have named leaders, we just have several women pitching in to help everything go smoothly. I'm sure other groups are more structured, but that wouldn't work for our group.
If there is no coordinator, you could also contact other quilters in your area to see if someone else would like to be the coordinator that organizes the group.
I would hate to see you discouraged because you don't want to start the chapter. I'm willing to bet someone in your area would love to do the admin work. Remember, we also get blankets that are crocheted and fleece. So your group could be just quilters or all types of blanketeers. Your pool to recruit from is larger than you may think.
Good luck!