Aside from being the only major sponsor of the Olympic revival at that time, Zappas's philanthropy also included contributions toward the foundation of several Greek institutions and schools as well as sports and exhibition facilities.

[22][23] After Botsaris's death in 1823, Zappas served under various military commanders of the independence struggle, such as Dimitrios Panourgias, Kitsos Tzavelas, and Michail Spyromilios.

[29] In early 1856, he sent a letter through diplomatic channels to King Otto of Greece, offering to fund the revival of the Olympic Games, and to provide cash prizes to the victors.

Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, the Greek foreign minister and head of the conservative anti-athletics lobby in Athens, suggested an industrial and agricultural exposition instead of an athletics event.

In July 1856, an article in the Greek press by Panagiotis Soutsos made Zappas's proposal widely known to the public and triggered a series of events.

[3] King Otto agreed to the organization of athletics competitions at four-year intervals, with Zappa's full sponsorship, to coincide with industrial and agricultural expositions.

The athletes competed in a variety of disciplines, similar to that of the ancient Olympic Games: running, discus, javelin throwing, wrestling, jumping, and pole climbing.

[34] Additionally, the first modern Olympic building was built to support the contests (and hosted the fencing events of 1896), as well as an industrial exhibition that anti-athletic members of the Greek government had forced upon the concept of the Games.

[38] Apart from his efforts to revive the Olympics, Evangelos Zappas made several philanthropic donations towards the foundation of schools, libraries and other similar institutions all over the Ottoman-occupied world, and notably their birthplace, Epirus.

Greek schools were founded and expanded in several Greek-populated villages and towns, such as Labovo, Lekli, Nivani, Dhroviani, Filiates, Delvina, Përmet.

[39] Moreover, a large amount of money was deposited in the National Bank of Greece to provide scholarships for Greek agricultural students in order to conduct postgraduate studies in Western Europe.

[26] During the anti-Greek Istanbul Pogrom in 1955, the facilities of the Zappeion female college in the Turkish capital were vandalized by the fanatical mob and a statue of him was broken into pieces.

But after four years his bones were exhumed and reinterred at the school's courtyard in Labovo where he was born, and his skull was enshrined beneath his memorial statue outside the Zappeion in Athens, Greece.