Here's what I have understood so far about the basic concept of it.
Basically, having a sigil, a badge, a namecard... of some project stuck to your profile so that you can indirectly promote their said project. This is followed by a compensation of sorts, in accordance with how many quality content posts/replies that you have made.. well this is how far I have understood it, tell me if I'm wrong.
Acceptance of a member is the first basic thing here before you can consider them eligible for the financial gains you've mentioned in your message.
Till date, I have not seen any campaign managers going before a specific topic, but yeah, there are boards given in the rules that the members need to post in. Constructiveness is one different subject and the manager himself decides whether he finds an enrolled member's posts as qualified or not for the payment. If the team thinks that they can manage their campaigns on their own, well, they don't really need a high-ranked account to do that as copper membership can get them the features that a high-ranked member gets, so they can easily share everything a manager does in OP.
No, I don't think so. Managers need to go through the history of member's posts in order to see whether they fulfilled the requirements as needed for their payment or not.
If the team thinks they don't need an escrow, it's good for them but it will not be seen as fine from the community's end as they will doubt the credibility of the team because they are new and there is nothing guaranteed here. It would be better for them to keep someone in between and then start a campaign from their end (if they wish to) or hire a campaign manager to do that. I've seen many campaign managers offering escrow services themselves, one is DarkStar_.