Not having the money it needs to run properly. Think of an organisation as a body: money is its food, and this one is not being fed. The word is nearly always used about things, not people — a cash-starved hospital, a cash-starved school, a cash-starved airline. You see it most in newspapers, where it does quiet political work: "starved" suggests somebody else did the starving, that the money was cut off rather than simply lost. A cash-starved public library is usually one the government stopped funding. It goes in front of a noun almost every time. It is close to cash-strapped, but stronger and sadder — cash-strapped is being short this month, cash-starved is going hungry year after year, with services shrinking because of it.