A little collection of alms - a bit of help (5)
I believe the answer is:
small
'a little' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'collection of alms a bit of help' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
an anagram of 'alms' is 'smal' which is present in the answer.
A single letter 'l' remains which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for small that I've seen before include "Piddling" , "Itsy-bitsy" , "Of little size" , "tiddly" , "Unimportant; little" .)