Raj Tahil credits MIT with sparking his entrepreneurial instincts. “I learned to see problems as interesting opportunities,” says the president of Torpac Capsules, which specializes in custom capsules and pharmaceutical equipment. In the spirit of creating opportunities, Tahil and his spouse, Mary Jo Wrenn, have created an MIT donor-advised fund (DAF)—an increasingly popular way to simplify charitable giving. 

The benefits of a DAF. An MIT DAF enables the donor to establish a charitable account maintained and managed by the MIT Investment Management Company, from which distributions may be made to MIT as well as to other charitable organizations. For Tahil and Wrenn, the speed with which DAF funds may be deployed came into play at a critical time: in the spring of 2020, they made a DAF distribution to the lab of Professor J. Christopher Love, the Raymond A. and Helen E. St. Laurent Chair in Chemical Engineering, to support the lab’s work on an affordable covid-19 vaccine.

A global view of the environment and health. The couple gives back to MIT in a variety of ways, including a fellowship to support graduate students who are conducting research to improve the environment through scientific, engineering, or public policy solutions. Tahil especially appreciates MIT’s research regarding the environment and medicine. “MIT is contributing to a better world by bringing its holistic, multidisciplinary approach to problems in a large variety of fields,” he says.

Help MIT build a better world. For more information, contact David Woodruff: 617.253.3990; daw@mit.edu. Or visit giving.mit.edu.