Fundraising ideas?

I have a friend whose husband passed away and she can’t afford to pay for anything. She is trying to figure out what to do, but she said everything is just too much for her and her daughter to pay. I was thinking of maybe trying to do something to help out and have seen where people have done some sort of fundraiser to help raise money for this sort of thing. What is something simple that wouldn’t really cost much to do and that I could do on my own as a fundraiser for something like this?

There is a like thread here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=18117845#post18117845
But dead solo I would try to find a hook to pull in local media/news outlets and a special fund. Was he a veteran? Someone active in the community? Anything special that people would recognize? Get a bank to set up a fund and get it on the 11 o’clock news and see where it goes from there.