More akin to your boss asking you to put together 5 proposals for a job bid and you putting together 4 and blatantly half-assing the 5th. Technically you didn't really need 5, but you were asked for 5 and you blew it off.
not akin to that at all
in you example it would be more like, you have 5 chances to get your proposals funded, but you MUST get 4 funded - if your first 4 get funded, done and done