Debt-for-nature swaps (DNS) establish the link between reducing a developing country’s debt in exchange for a commitment to protect the environment from the debtor-government. In the Philippines, DNS agreement with the US government was initiated through the shared interest of the local civil society organizations and the government. As one of the world’s megadiverse countries yet also one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, the Philippines continues to face social-ecological challenges with its troubled history of declining forest cover. With this, managing DNS funds necessitates extending frontiers to ensure sustained efforts of protecting and restoring forest landscapes by promoting nature-based solutions (NbS). Using reflexive case study as an approach, this paper provides the Philippine context of DNS and examines several conservation projects, experiences, and lessons learned by the Forest Foundation Philippines, a DNS fund manager and knowledge broker, as it amplifies its diversified portfolio of projects into NbS. This paper aims to situate the effectiveness of DNS in NbS and investigate how NbS interventions operate under a DNS agreement with the Forest Foundation Philippines. Several exemplars from local experiences are laid out to support three emergent themes from the analysis: (1) DNS provides flexibility in project designs to fund NbS efforts; (2) DNS can foster multistakeholder and cross-sectoral partnerships to implement NbS projects; and (3) DNS funds can be effectively managed by civil society for climate action. In the end, recommendations are offered for NbS actors at various scales of forest ecosystems and beyond in establishing and managing DNS toward creating an enabling environment for NbS interventions to succeed.