Facebook and American Express’s small business division, American Express Open, are joining forces to support five small business companies on Facebook with advice and $20,000 to grow their businesses.

The contest is part of American Express Open’s Small Business Saturday initiative started last year. The purpose of it is to encourages shoppers to support small, independently owned businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This year AMEX hopes to develop the initiative into an even larger movement across the U.S, says Mashable.

10 finalists were selected from more than 11,000 small businesses that entered the contest. And now users can cast votes for their favorites from now until July 20 on Facebook. The winners will be invited to the Facebook headquarter’s where they’ll get advice from the company on how to best design and customize their page, ads and social plugins.

Facebook has already partnered with major companies on small business initiatives before, including a 2008 campaign with Visa that awarded $100 in Facebook credits to the first 20,000 business owners to sign up for Visa’s Facebook application.

Facebook and AMEX also recently announced a deal that allows businesses to buy Facebook Credits to use on advertising through AMEX’s membership rewards program.

On June 22, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Leo Burnett released the details of a new interactive ad unit created for Facebook.