and its linking ability is a huge simplifier for long term planning.

What long term planning? Who is going to come up with that plan? Will everyone agree to that plan? Who will be paying for the resources to work on that plan?

Combined with a Kanban board for tracking, progress of tickets. You remove a ton of pain.

I am not seeing how that would help. What are you going to do if there is no progress on something? Fire volunteer X because he didn’t make progress on ticket Y (as he has no interest in ticket Y)?