Dear Design, how much do you cost me?

How do you deal with organisations that would desperately need design, but have no budget? The problem is that a service design project that is done well, that goes deeper (read: in which research is done properly), that does not merely replicate quick solutions tried and tested elsewhere, does indeed cost money, and is something that companies with a certain turnover or size, or at least a certain programmatic intention, can certainly afford. But those who do not have those resources, or those who have them but do not feel like taking the risk and investing in something they have never done before, are left out. However, if the governing principle of all design is 'try to do better with less' then we can try to apply it also to the estimates we present and the activities we put in place, in order to be able to offer something even to small realities: this is not the road to 'low cost' design, but rather a design challenge: how can we work while maintaining quality but better negotiating the activities actually needed and making the most of the resources already available?