The University of Connecticut is creating a scholarship fund for students from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where 20 students and six staff members were gunned down last week.

The Sandy Hook School Memorial Scholarship Fund will help pay college costs for Sandy Hook students who choose to attend UConn when they’re older. Siblings of the student victims and children of the adult victims also will be eligible. The awards will be need-based.

Donations will be collected through the University of Connecticut Foundation. A spokesman says the foundation hasn’t set a fundraising goal and will decide later whether the scholarships can cover the students’ entire college costs.

UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma and his wife have donated $80,000. The university says 650 other individual donations have been received in the fund’s first 24 hours.