OneRepublic, CT School Shooting: Group Sets Up Fundraising Drive for Victims' Families

Posted on Dec 16th 2012 10:02PM by Brittany Galla

OneRepublic fundraising video for CT school shooting victims Interscope

In wake of the tragedy that struck Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where alleged gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 students and six staff members, OneRepublic has announced their plan to help out those affected.

The group, led by singer Ryan Tedder, has set up a special fund to go directly to the victims' families on fundraising website, IndieGogo.com.

They committed to donating $20,000 to the fund, and recorded a video to explain their sentiments.

In the video, Tedder says, "Hi, we are OneRepublic and as many of you are aware at this point, there was a tragedy that took place in Newtown, Connecticut yesterday, a shooting that's affected now the lives of hundreds of people and more specifically, the lives of 26 families. After tragedies like this there's all kinds of things that people wanna do. The one thing that we can do immediately is donate money to these families. A lot of these people won't be able to go back to work for weeks and weeks and weeks; some of them lost the actual breadwinners of their families. There's funerals to pay for, all kinds of medical things, both psychological and physical, that are gonna be needing funding, and the last thing that any of them should be worrying about right now is money."

Tedder adds, "So please, if you feel so inclined to donate $5, $10, $500, $5,000, as much or as little, every single cent matters ... again, I don't know of any, more immediate way of helping the victims of the Connecticut school shooting than removing any fear of financial obligation or worry whatsoever so we'd love for you to do your part and help us with this. Thank you."

After their announcement, the group tweeted their thanks for people who started to donate. "We have already raised $35,000 in commitments today!!" they tweeted earlier. A few hours later, they tweeted their shock with the amount of donations. "We're gonna have to raise the goal For the Sandy Hook shooting victim fund," they wrote. "$50K raised in 24 hrs- I think we may bump to $250K."

Watch OneRepublic's "Feel Again" Video

Follow @AOLMusic on Twitter | Like AOL Music on Facebook | Sign Up for Newsletter

Download OneRepublic Songs | Buy OneRepublic Albums