Give to animal is 100 times return.
To an unethical person; 1000 return.
To a normal moral person; 100 000.
To a normal person with no desires; 10 mil.
To a stream enterer; immeasurable return
To people of higher attainment is also immeasurable.
Yet gifts to a religious cause are even more than to an enlightened person. Why? Because we support to a community dedicated to kindness, compassion and liberation. We are in service to the preservation of the teaching to survive, even when the people practicing it are unwise and unethical.
Our own development such as morality, heart, stillness and insights are greater merits than giving to others.
Yes, help support the establishment, but keeping the precepts is better. If we can keep the precepts, then we can up our game and spend an hr in pure empathy kindness. Greater still, is remaining in one-pointedness seeing the impermanence, the dissatisfaction and non self of phenomenon. Know their origin and their ceasing.
This order of acts puts the merits of giving in perspective.
