What do we know about volunteering?

I commented on good ol' ADHR's post saying something to the effect "everyone knows that volunteering is increasing." Perhaps I spoke too soon. This illuminating article says that our volunteering statistics are very crude.

I know that I read that more and more people have been signing up for the Peace Corp and AmeriCorp, and it looks like more people are donating. Web activism is very high. I read somewhere that the number of 501(c)(3) organizations is increasing. But I haven't been able to find an easy picture of the data, in numbers of hours worked or people who volunteered, yet. If anyone finds something, let me know.

I should update the section at Wikipedia...oh well

CIA World Factbook

Why isn't the data presented in time-series? Why isn't it downloadable as Excel files? Why are government bureaucracies so incompetent?

So I'm doing a project and I need the crude birth rate and the total fertility rate trend for the past thirty years, as well as the average wage of females. (You can guess what the topic is.) As far as I can tell I'll have to access independent archives of each year and piece the thing together myself.

There's something rather fishy about the sheer incompetence of that design. Has no one in the CIA noticed this? Why oh why is it still so hard to get basic information?

By the way -- yes, I've looked through the data on the U.S.Census website and been very disappointed.

UPDATE: This gives me an idea on what to do with my website. Put up reams and reams of statistical data, well-organized.