I’m not sure what is meant by this. I can understand the logic of not getting into SEO (or anything, really) to make money if you don’t have the capital in the first place to make it work, but in this instance we have a website for an organisation which is always going to exist, irrespective of its success or lack of success (in terms of SEO, finances, exposure). So we can either do nothing with SEO, or we can use the resources we have, however little, to actually do what we can with SEO. The only logical option is to just do what we can, because that is bound to be better than nothing, even if it isn’t as highly competitive as somebody who is willing to invest heaps of money into some other type of SEO to make money from it.
Edit: Besides, @Fonzie illustrated that there are many free or inexpensive ways of optimising SEO on the website just by simply knowing the fundamentals of SEO in the first place. That’s the kind of stuff that anyone can apply, regardless of budget.