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)
'of alms a bit of help' is the wordplay.
'of' indicates anagramming the letters (the answer comes from or \'of\' the letters).
'a bit of help' becomes 'l' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'alms' anagrammed gives 'smal'.
'smal'+'l'='SMALL'
'collection' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. It may be part of another bit of the clue.
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" .)