I waited some time to respond here, hope this is still relevant/useful.
No strong opinions on the separate matching pools, this definitely sounds like a great idea, might be good to formalize and make this externally visible as you suggest!
Overall, I deeply agree that we need and can avoid future controversies like Shell & DEI, but I don’t think different social presences for all rounds are the solution, although I do support this gradual move for the community rounds.
Imo the main issue here for both of these PR tragedies is - more than anything else - how tough it it is to organize streamlined coordination within a DAO. Wrt to Shell there is 6 months of internal history and buildup here - it would take me a few hours to write down what I personally saw as influential factors, noting I’ve only seen a tiny part of this puzzle. 
In any case to me these internal failures were at the root of all this, leading to external symptoms of opacity and inconsistent communication. A lot of work in progress here, beautiful to see all the strategic documents on this forum.
When it comes to communication strategy - what this post is about - I agree we need more credible neutrality, I just believe there’s other paths to achieve this.
Imo we have not been leveraging enough (yet), what the differentiation is between the program rounds (managed by gitcoin) and the community rounds (managed independently, run on grants stack). To me this is key, rather than to distance the brand from all the rounds, whether they are run by Gitcoin or not. Having clear terms now to differentiate gitcoin-run vs community will definitely help a lot, so thank you for driving this.
This is actually already quite the step, small but crucial and impactful. People in general are barely aware that this distinction exists, to them rounds on Gitcoin = Gitcoin, and this needs to change.
This is already in progress and quite the task but a beautiful opportunity to win back hearts and market share.
My plan would be
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continue to improve internal coordination (too much happening to list here, but things are looking well, including the updated essential intents as a northstar.)
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associate the Gitcoin main twitter account even more with the program rounds, rather than take away what defines it (as @connor goes into a bit). If we are serious about community being one of the essential intents, it feels inconsistent and strategically unwise to make our main account with 200K followers into a soulless and neutral voice that only retweets other accounts which are starting from scratch. On top of it, having separate accounts, at least for Gitcoin-run programs, will dilute the impact and connection with our community (aka existing user base).
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support community round operators (strategically and financially) to build a social media presence for their community rounds, I think this can be done gradually, would echo much of what @quaylawn wrote. I would only do this once a continuous social media presence with a dedicated team can be guaranteed.
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focus the existing (limited) resources on building out the presence of our key product accounts. Grants Stack (our platform) and Passport (our identity solution) being the underlying (mostly) neutral solutions Gitcoin (the DAO) offers to its user base. Gitcoin’s credible neutrality is reinforced on this level. We emphasize we have a platform (Grants Stack) and a protocol (Allo) that can be used independently by our community.
(Note: I would discontinue the Allo Protocol twitter account, as it dilutes resources, Grants Stack can mention the protocol when relevant)
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As mentioned in a comment on @Sov’s GG19 strategy outline draft I believe Gitcoin can avoid future controversies by following the above strategy and show the world through its main account that it is the
- the umbrella brand
- owner of the program rounds
- supporter of community rounds
Next to original tweets on the program rounds, both product & community accounts get retweeted often by Gitcoin’s main account, which emphasize this positioning.
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What else can we do to explicitly avoid future damage to our brand?
- Linking key beliefs/values to our program.
This should not be too difficult: we already talk about these very often and they return (to some extent) in the updated essential intents: the importance of transparency, to build open source, to support public goods and key infrastructure, importance of education, honoring the will of our community.
This will help to undo the damage which happened during the preceding rounds or at least create a consistent tone of voice.
- Crisis communication and isolation of potential controversy.
Random example, Amazon runs a community round on Grants Stack to support individuals who are breaking up unions.
If such a controversial round pops up and part of our ‘existing user base’ is not happy, Gitcoin (the DAO) can make the decision this is a community round which Gitcoin (the Twitter account) should not retweet or endorse. This also makes sense as we honor the will of our community. (values/beliefs)
If controversy erupts and communication is necessary, the Grants Stack Twitter account will release a statement, which Gitcoin the main account will then retweet, with additional context if needed, helping to emphasize the distinction to our user base that
- Grants Stack is our permissionless platform and
- Gitcoin is and remains the overarching umbrella brand, which communicates in times of crisis.
Happy to chat more!