I agree with Anthere's responses to the other part of your mail, so I'll just respond to this part:
Is there any chance the Board would approve my derivative of the logo?
I'd suggest the logo not be hastily deleted since there are dozens of derivatives and it might set a precedent for deleting those. The visual guidelines policy is not the same as the policy which says how derivative logos are to be handled - we don't yet have a policy for that. Some initial examples are at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Uses_of_logo_derivatives but it's not moved much beyond this stage yet. Until we have a policy, we can not approve your logo, but I would rather it be kept for discussion than deleted at this stage.
Angela.